He Who Came First Knew Nothing But War
by hansolo18
Summary: The Ace had always been a War Boy. This was an undisputed fact. Ace never expected one of the Immortan's wives to join the ranks but felt no surprise when Furiosa took them by storm.
1. For dogs have surrounded me

_So he poured out on them his burning anger, the violence of war. It enveloped them in flames, yet they did not understand; it consumed them, but they did not take it to heart._

 _Isaiah 42:25_

The Ace had always been a War Boy. This was an undisputed fact. There were some War Boys who were raised from the Wretched, others who were born to the Wives and considered imperfect, or to the few concubines reserved for the Imperators. He, unlike all the others, was not raised high by the Immortan to become a War boy. The Ace had been one from the beginning, long before he even met the Colonel called Joe. He was a boy made of war, and he had been the first.

He was five years old when the bombs fell. Five, like the fingers on a perfect hand, an outdated way of counting in their wretched world, where one did not expect to live a whole they counted the days they drew breath. It was the Immortan's system, a new way, not the old.

The boy was five when the bombs fell. Five years, five fingers. He was alone in the place with the buildings. He was alone with the corpses that turned black and pink by the blast that collapsed his house. He was alone in the hole in the ground below it, where he and his parents hid. They did not make it, but he did.

He crawled from the hole that became his parent's grave, and left that place with the shattered windows, knocked out doors, and turned up trees, and the people who did not move.

He went into the scrub and the heat, and followed the black topped roads. He ate food out of the cars that littered the roads, filled with burned bodies and black flies. Some of them had those cans with the pulley tabs like the food grandma fed her cat, and he pulled the tabs and sucked the syrup or salty water and ate the treasured insides.

The boy may have grown larger, but how much did he know without Mama to mark the line above his head. The muscle of his arms and legs grew hard like the bottoms of his feet, which blackened against the hot ground and cracked, but did not bleed. His nails grew long like a monster, but broke with enough pressure so he knew he was not one. His hair grew long past his eyes, and his skin turned red, then brown, brown, brown, until he matched the rest of the burned out world.

And he was alone. All alone. But that was okay. He would be okay. He had what he needed, and all he needed was himself. Nights and days came and went, and he lost track of how many. He just followed the path of the sun in the sky and the moon in the night, until the black top turned to gravel, then dirt, and finally grass. And it was him, and the sun, and the moon, and he was alone. It was okay because he had himself, himself, himself, until quite suddenly he had Her.

She who was crouched down by a fading pool of water, one side burned skin that was blackened in parts, but healing in others, and the rest deep gold. She stared at him with dark eyes and threatening tooth, but did not lunge. She just watched as he slipped down to the water's edge and sipped the brackish pool until he too crouched down and watched her with dark eyes and less threatening tooth. The sun passed overhead, and the shadows lengthened and fell to night, leaving both of them simply together.

She had no name, nor did she need one. It became quite simply he and Her. She who looked like a dog, but was not one. She who did not care for him, but did not seem to want to give up the company of a living thing, when those that were dead were still fresh enough to feed her, and by the time that they weren't, he was Pack by proxy and could not be harmed.

In the beginning they circled one another but never drew close, always within eyesight, but never near enough to touch. She would come and go, often with bloody mouth, and he would eat from his cans, or pluck drying berries from the brush, or eat insects, or ground laid eggs, or eat leaves of things he thought he remembered. Until one of those things made him shake and heave and weak for days, and it was during this time that she came closer.

She nudged at his side and sour lips, took his fingers in her mouth and nibbled but did not bite, and then laid near him in the shade of the grass. She waited until he was strong again. Then she walked with him, and he with her, and they chased the sun together.

The boy with the five perfect fingers, and who was once five perfect years, was useful to her. He rubbed cool mud and the goop from the green spiny plants that soothed the heat on her skin, and the fur grew back in short and patchy, until she looked much less like a naked thing and more like the Dingo she was. In return, she brought him fresh meat, and together they took comfort in another living thing. Curling up tight when the nights grew cold and panting together in the heat of the sun. Her fur was sleek under his palm and her tongue warm when she licked that day from his skin.

She spoke to him with wide yawns, howls and yowls, and very rarely barks that whooshed up from her rib cage. She spoke to him before she left him to hunt, upon waking in the morning, and when they bedded down at night until her own sounds were more familiar than the words of his parents and he put aside his few remembered words and responded in kind.

They traveled through the scrub grass, and she hunted the little rodents and lizards, and he ate what she brought. He watched and he learned, and eventually she let him help. He was bad at the killing, but he was fast, and he could herd the prey toward her waiting jaws. Eventually he figured out a snap snap twist with his hands which did what her jaws did with less blood and for a while they feasted like Before Times, until their travels led them back to the black topped roads that had gone light grey in the sun.

They walked along the pavement, following the fissures in the road and the potholes, until on the horizon he saw the looming shapes of the tall square things that he once knew the name for but lost among the grass. He led Her near those tall shapes, remembering the cans with the sugar sweet taste that he wanted on his tongue, never realizing that the world was not just Him and Her and the prey that fed them. But there were other living things too. When they drew near the tall things, he saw for the first time since the bomb others that were like him. They who used the cars, and made the can food, and were big and tall like his parents had been.

He and She disappeared into the tall grass the edged the roads, and hunkered down as the Others drove past, leaving air that reeked of gasoline.

She woofed and he yodeled and they split, she into the tall grass, and he into those grid laid streets. He ducked through open doors, picking up whatever seemed useful. He found a bag with straps that fit over his arms, a sharp knife that folded into the handle, and an empty bottle with a red sipping top. He found cans without the pull tabs which he left and boxes of things that he took, including one half full of dog treats that She may like. He found a pair of blue pants that fit him loose around the waist and long around the feet, but were better than the ones he had which cut tight into his sides when he managed to fit the button. He found a new shirt that didn't have sleeves, but was the color of the sky, and came to rest low on his thighs. He found some shoes, but he left them.

When he returned to the brown grass, She yipped and licked at his hand. They drifted off the road, but not far from it, and followed the Others back into the scrub land which was their home, leaving the tall, looming place behind.

The sun and the moon past and past and past overhead and He forgot about the Others and their cars, and they left the road and returned to the grass and wandered until they hit the wastes of sand. He stopped when his toes sunk into the hot grains but She ventured forth, stopping atop a low dune and looking back at him. Ear flicking once, before she crested and disappeared and he had no choice but to scamper after her. Feet registering the heat as pain but nothing he couldn't handle.

She caught desert lizards, and found them shallow water pools, and he learned how to survive in the wastes. It was all going so well yet everything must come to a close.

He found a car out in the wastes one night. Brown with rust and empty when he peered inside. There was nothing of value he could see within the cab, but he pulled his knife to jimmy the trunk open anyway. He had managed to wedge the blade into the keyhole when a crushing force came down upon his ankle and pulled. He yowled as his body tipped back, head colliding with the cold sand, and his limbs flailed, trying to pull his leg free. A large form burst from under the carriage, snarling syllables, brandishing a dark rectangular form. In the dark the Other looked monstrous, and She snarled and barked a warning before darting forward, teeth clamping down around the Other's leg. The hand came loose and the boy scurried away, yelping in fear, and She let the leg drop from her mouth to chase after him.

But he did not get far, the Other grabbing him around the torso and flinging him into the gaping body of the car, and the door slammed shut on them both. The man crawling over the center console to the driver's seat, as the boy shrieked and She scratched at the window but the glass was firm between them and No. No. No.

The car rumbled to life and the Other roared. "Jesus Christ kid! Shut the hell up!"

The boy whimpered and beat his fists against the window, watching Her run after them until the car picked up too much speed and she was left behind. He trembled and keened, and hunched down into the footwell, head pulled between his knees and fingers fisting in his tangled hair. And they drove and drove and drove.

They came to a stop amidst a grouping of other cars. There were more than the fingers on one hand, more than the fingers on two, possibly more than the teeth in Her mouth. The Other left the car and called out with his words, and the boy shook and shuddered and cried out when the man pulled open the door nearest him dragging the boy out onto the sand.

The child was surrounded by Others, and the one who took him said, "I found him out in the wastes, him and some fucking dingo. He hasn't said anything, just keeps fucking whining."

The group shifted, eyes flicking to a single man. He was tall, blond, and had eyes cold like a snake's but blue as the sky in the daytime.

"You did good, Major Kalashnikov." The man finally said as he stepped towards the boy and knelt down.

"Well boy, you gonna talk for me? Tell me your name?"

The boy snarled and wanted move away, but doing so would only bring him closer to the other men lurking around.

"You brought me a feral child, Kalashnikov. Is this some kind of joke?"

"He could have known about the aquifer." Kalashnikov stated petulantly.

The blue eyed man stood and waved a lazy hand at the group. "Take him to the Sheila's; see if they can pull some words out of him."

Hands grabbed at the child once again and hauled him away to a large tent filled with women, one for each of his fingers. Many held babies or young children, and they all turned to look. The few nearest the boy made noises with their mouths. He crouched low and snarled, back curling, lips pulled back from his teeth.

"Ah, we got an anklebiter." One of the women said, and the others laughed and turned back to their children or whatever had occupied them before. The one who spoke moved toward him slowly before stopping a few feet away and sitting down.

He had nowhere to go with the opening shut tight behind him, and the woman right before him. He made a keening noise low in his throat and wished She was with him.

"Ah now. None of that, you're alright." Her voice was quiet and she watched the space over his shoulder, hands open in front of her, fingers loose and unthreatening. "My name is Hannah, what's yours?"

Lips pressed tight, he hunched down on the covered floor. The surface felt slick under his feet, nothing like the sand in the desert, or Her fur, and it was the color the sky became just after sunset.

"Do you know how old you are?" Hannah asked.

He raised one hand and spread his fingers, twitching the tips of each one in turn. One. two. Three. Four. Five.

The woman smiled, "Five huh? You're too big to be five, Billy Lid."

"How long's it been since the world went?" One of the ladies said, "He probably was five."

"Well then, isn't that something!" She said, smiling again. "You, my love, are seven. Do you know how many that is?"

She held up both of her hands and raised all the fingers on one hand and two more on the other.

"This is how old you are now."

He frowned and turned away from her.

Hannah tried for the boy's attention again, but he ignored her, ignored the food she set down beside him a little while later, and ignored the whole tent as they settled down to sleep. He just laid against the ground-not-ground, and watched the shadows move against the side of the tent, and listened to the babies cry and suckle, and the children kick in their sleep. Then slowly, so slowly, his own eyes shut, and he drifted.

In the morning the Others gathered. Most drove off in their cars or on their bikes to search the far horizons. Those that remained hunched over paper covered tables, and talked and talked and talked. The blond man who led them strutted about, surveying all that he had with hungry eyes, but always looked out over the dunes for the things that he did not.

The women walked past that man with shuttered eyes and clenched teeth, and their children scuttled around at his feet, and the Boy sat hunkered in the shade of the tent watching them with eyes that cut.

They brought him food, and this time he ate. Some desert lizard that was not hot from blood but from fire, and a handful of grain. They did not give him water, and the boy saw that they had little themselves and figured they never learned how to look.

The leader, whose name was Joe, talked at Hannah and motioned at the boy, and the woman just shook her head and shrugged.

They left the child alone those first few days. Hannah would come and talk and sit by him until he stopped flinching from each new word and let her touch his hand with a few fingers.

After the second day he ignored their food and watched them struggle with their thirst. He slept in the shade during the day, crept through the woman's tent at night, and called out to Her in the evenings. One lonely howl, that echoed through the air, and made the Others curse and kick dirt at him and the women hold their children close.

Four suns after they took him, he got an answering howl in return. He ran out into the desert yipping all the way. She came from the sand, tail waving fast, her tongue on his face and mouth, cleaning the days of loneliness away. And it was good good good.

A gunshot split the air. Joe standing pistol drawn to the sky his blue eyes hard and mouth a sneer.

The boy and the dingo froze at the sound, so new to their ears and stared.

"Boy, come here." The man demanded.

The boy did not. He burst to his feet and ran for the dunes beyond but did not get far. Another crack and the sand split just in front of him, and he stumbled to a halt. Then another, and he tumbled away, and she was barking, even though She never barked. And then Hannah was there, arms pulling tight across his rib cage, yanking him back back back. Her lips moving fast and soft in his ear, but he did not understand, just wailed his displeasure.

"You have to stay." She held him tight. "You have to stay."

Then he was dumped at Joe's feet, and the boy not move. He just stared at the ground, and She whined somewhere behind him, but did not leave, and was not shot at again.

"You're mine, boy." Joe said before slapping him hard across the face. "You are mine. You don't get to leave."

The big man turned away and the boy calls out to Her. She comes. His fingers are in her fur, and it is almost okay because she was back with him. He was not alone amongst these Others, with their strange sounds and fire hot food, and their cars and their booming guns.

Slowly he lets her fur slip from his fingers and he moves into the shade of the tent and settles. She curls around his back, and helps him eat the food that Hannah brings though is it not enough for the two of them, let alone one.

Joe snarls and places his gun away. Then he goes back to his maps and his plans, and the men eye the boy and his dingo, fingering their guns. She will do nothing for now. Just lays her head on the sand and he sinks against her side and he sleeps. Her eyes follow the men and gleam with fire in the night.

For many days She exists near the Others with bristling fur, snarling mouth, and eyes that dart. Until they seem to forget that she is a wild feral thing, and ignore her just like they ignore the boy. The two sleep in the shade during the heat of the day, and watch the other children scurry around them, as fearful as their mothers. They do not mind the fear, just watch and grumble. They think about how the children are easy prey, but dare not move against them for the guns that bark would no doubt hurt like everything else in this world.

There comes a time when the Others pack up camp. Dumping everything into the back of the vehicles, they move farther into the desert, the boy and the dingo riding in the back of a truck. They zip through the air, and Her tongue lolls in the wind, and her tail sweeps, sweeps, sweeps. Then they stop, and they are met by other men, and Joe's group grows larger. It Grows so large that a second women's tent is made.

The boy watches and waits.

He waits, and the group of Others grows until it has more members than he ever learned to count. The food becomes more scarce, and the water scarcer. If he and She did not sneak away in the dark to hunt and drink the water only they seemed to know how to find, he figured he'd be just like the skin and bone children that started dying. Not in the same way as his parents, with blackened skin and pink burns but slowly, yet suddenly, during the hot nights. Their breath just stopped in their chests, and their mothers would wail and beat their hands to their skulls in grief.

Until he was the last one, and the mothers watched him with eyes full of hate, and only Hannah would dare come near him. Sitting in the shade of the tent in the long afternoons, she would talk, talk, talk. Telling stories, and histories, and whatever made up thing. He began to recognize more words, but never bothered to use them himself.

Joe and his men ventured far and wide, never seeming to find what they were looking for. They came back with news of something called they called a refinery, and lead mines, and they would turn and stare at the huge rocks that rose in the distance with something akin to awe and jealousy.

The group got thinner and weaker, all except for the boy and the dingo. They were watched with jealous eyes, and the men began to talk and point with claw handed fingers. For a time Joe would wave them off, until he too turned to them with slavering maw and pulled a pistol from his side.

The bullet found Her skull before the action had even registered to the boy. There was blood, and it was red red red and it was streaming all across the sand, and sounds emerged strangled from his throat until he was screaming.

"No!" His hands on her, shaking the golden fur on golden sand. "No!"

Suddenly Joe was there, pushing the boy off to crash into the ground. Joe had a knife, and the boy lunged, arms latching tight around the man's throat, long nails stabbing at eyes and face. The Child's mouth going for neck, like he had seen Her do for every kill.

And he bit, and there was blood on his teeth, but it did not clench the fire behind his eyes. Joe ripped him off and smashed the butt of the knife against his mouth again and again, until it wasn't just Joe's blood on his tongue, but his own. The boy fell against the dirt and spat red and white, as one of the teeth that had fallen and grown back in came loose.

Hannah pulled him to her, and dragged him away, kicking and clawing. She tried to soothe him with words, but all he knew was the blood in his mouth, the tears on his face, and the gaping sickness in his chest where She should be.

They took Her skin first, then butchered Her for the meat, which they tossed onto the cook fire until it was charred near black. The boy watched all of it from his place within Hannah's arms.

When the body was nothing but bloodied skeleton, Joe stood, wiped his hands on a cloth and stared down at the boy. "It's for the best." He said and walked away.

The boy broke from Hannah's hold and collapsed in the sand by the remains. His fingers splay over red tinged skull, and he whines and whimpers and howls his grief. The hole in his mouth bled and gaped emptily. With great difficulty he pried one of Her incisors from Her skull and jammed it firmly into the waiting hole in his mouth. It hurt hurt hurt, but he clacked his teeth until the tooth sat in the socket in a way that let him close his mouth with ease, and he held the tooth with his tongue until the bleeding stopped and his body accepted it as his own.

It was that night, when he watched them eat her flesh that his indifference for the Others turned to hate.


	2. A band of evil doers has encompassed me

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.

(Excerpt) Ezekiel 25:17

Joe set his sights on the Great Big Rock in the distance. He watched it and counted his bullets and the men and the women and the cars, but he does not count the children because there is just the boy.

The boy who watches and waits, and snarls, and says nothing but the word "No" became little more than a useless accessory to Joe, something too valuable to leave but not important enough for anything else.

With the dingo gone and their hunger momentarily sated, the women crowded him, trying to turn him into the memory of their own lost children. They called him a number of names, and gave him clothes, cutting his matted hair so short he was all but bald, just like to top of Major Kalashnikov's head. They talked and talked and talked at him but only Hannah spoke to him.

Hannah, with the gentle hands on his back when the memory of Her loss became too much. Hannah, who taught him more numbers than he had fingers and toes. Hannah, who never called him anything but what he was. Nameless. Hannah, whom he could trust because she expected nothing from him beyond what he was willing to give.

Things settled like they had when She was with him, and he began to venture out into the night. Not knowing that the men tried to follow, until Joe himself caught the boy in the wastes while he was calling upon the hidden desert waters. The boy heard the click of the gun as it pressed against the back of his head and the man's demands to "show me how you find it boy."

With that gun to his head, he did and suddenly he wasn't viewed as something useless, but as someone who knew the desert and knew it well. Joe kept him close and tried to suck the boy's knowledge dry. So the boy shared little to spite him.

The water led them to food, and they moved closer to that Great Big Rock and swallowed groups of Others into themselves and swelled and swelled and swelled.

They took in a group that painted themselves with white clay to stave off the sun. Then another who huffed exhaust fumes and another who scarred themselves, and they all listened to Joe. Listened to his speeches, and his promises that the Big Rock had water and lots of it and all they needed to do was take it, and they listened and they believed. But the boy saw Joe's pretty words and knew they were sour because he had killed Her, so what else could he be but rotten?

The boy stayed with the Others and hated them, but for Hannah who told him true. How the world had ended. How Joe became the hero of the wars for oil and water. How he had turned that success into the gang he had now. So when she told the boy that three hundred and sixty five days had passed and he was probably eight now, he believed her.

When he was nine by Hannah's count, Joe's Gang became Joe's Army and they turned their sights to that Great Big Rock and under the cover of night moved towards it.

So while Major Kalashnikov and the main force distracted the Rock Dwellers, Joe and a smaller group attempted to scale the walls. They took the boy with them.

The looked to the steep sides then to the boy, and Joe nodded once before barking a laugh saying, "Boy you're going to climb for your supper."

They tied a rope around the boy's waist and then shoved him toward the wall.

"Just go straight to the top."

So the boy went, skittering like a lizard, cutting his nails deep into cracks and fingers grasping at ledges. His toes and heel and foot scrambled for traction. His muscles burned and the air that went into his lungs burned, but did not eclipse the burn of hatred that the boy felt for those below.

How he plotted as he climbed. All the ways he could ruin them. Cut the rope; tell the Rock Dwellers Joe's plan or jump from those tall, tall heights. It was something he considered for the briefest of moments, before a quick glance down at those figures so small and the sudden fear of being so high had him clutching at the rock and squeezing himself close.

No. He decided as he pulled himself to a narrow ledge and stopped to rest his overtired arms. He would not die for Joe. He would see the man dead himself.

It took the boy all night and all day to climb the rock face and when he reached the crest, he tied the rope around a thick stone pillar, then sank into the shade of the spires.

From where he sat he could see how the Great Rock unfolded. The main form was surrounded by thinner spires, like fingers around a palm. Each was connected to the other through a series of bridges. Some made of rope and metal, others carved from the rock itself.

The majority of the Rock Dwellers' spotters stayed on the roof of the main rock, posed with long barreled rifles and field glasses. A few single patrol swept through the outer spires, the Dwellers so sure that the height would deter any climbers.

It took half a day for Joe to appear over the edge. His group of fifteen coming to a groaning halt on the roof shortly after. They rubbed at their hands and shoulders, swearing away their pain. The boy scoffed at them and contemplated a kick to send them back over.

The Dwellers did not notice the Others until they charged across the rock bridge. Joe's men doing their damnedest to make it to the main spire on the bottle neck of a crossing. The boy had snuck across while Joe's men gathered and managed to escape the worst of the firing guns and falling bodies. He took cover in the shady stairwell that led down down down. So when the defenders blew the bridge and men who were on it, the boy laughed and laughed and laughed. For who would have guessed that Joe would die so quickly and ingloriously as that?

The boy turned away to sneak down into that black pit, curious to see if the talk told true and water really did stand in still pools and pour from the walls when a crushing pressure came down upon his shoulder and yanked back. It was Joe, in furious glory, soot covered, body bruised but whole.

"It's just you and me now, boy." Joe said as he thrust a gun in the child's hands and led the way into the blackness.

The boy crept with Joe, and hid behind pillars with Joe, and shot at the defenders with Joe, and took that Great Rock from the inside with Joe. So when they opened the great doors to let in the rest of the army, he had done it all with Joe.

When the battle was won, and the Great Rock was theirs, the men gathered around and called Joe immortal. For such a blast should have killed a lesser man. And Joe laughed a great heaving laugh and said, "Then I am immortal. The Immortal Joe." And it was all a great big joke.

They subdued the remaining Rock Dwellers, taking the women as their own, and killing the men who were old enough to fight, but not the children who watched the Others with fearful eyes and the feral boy with a terrible awe.

So when Joe Kalashnikov and the Fat Man, and the head of the White Painted Men, and the head of the Scar Bearers, and those who breathed toxins sat around the fire that night they told tales of the battle and listened to Joe recount his exploits with worshiping eyes. Then Joe drew the boy out to sit by his side, calling him "my ace in the hole," and from that day onward that is what all those men called him too.

For long weeks they glutted on water and learned the secrets of the aquifer. The water gardens, and the store rooms, and the vault filled with Before Time treasures and Joe looked at it all, then took it all and made it his.

Joe took the prettiest of the women and made them his wives because he wanted children; he took the old world treasure to Barter Town because he wanted cars for his army. He took the old refinery and gave it to the Fat Man, and he now had guzzoline to go with his water. Then when the boy was seven years and one thousand five hundred and ninety five days, Joe took the lead mines for the Major and sent him to make the bullets.

For all those days the legend of the Immortal Joe grew and grew and grew, and the people came from far and wide to verify its truth, and those who did remained in the sand below and were called the Wretched and screamed up "Immortal, Immortal, Immortal Joe!" and Joe made his speeches and gave them a trickle of water and called himself a god. Until those below forgot it was a nickname and called Joe Immortan.

All the while the boy known as The Ace grew in Joe's world and he hated and he learned. The Ace learned from Hannah, who was considered pretty among the wives, and therefore one of Joe's. She taught him history, and math, and writing, and to sew, and sing, and to smile pretty even when he didn't want to. When she ran out of things to teach he turned to the men who collected under Joe. The white painted men taught him about cars, how to drive and fix and how to fight from them. He learned from the scarred men, who showed him how to fight with his fists and his feet, not just the tooth and claw instincts of an animal. Methods he still employed and they slapped him on the back and grinned at him for fighting dirty. He learned from the fume breathers about how to forget the wretchedness of the world and learned for himself that he did not want to forget. He could not forget Her or his hate of the Others. For those two things were all that he had. So he left them with their fumes, and put his other skills to use, and he became Known.

Known for his usefulness on runs between the allied towns, Known for his skill in driving, or in defending the vehicles, for fighting off challengers , for getting lower pricing at Barter Town, for hunting, and pulling water from the desert, and sewing up wounds, and speaking the Dingo's tongue and for being The Ace.

He did all this until Joe called him one day to stand before a group of children.

"These boys," Joe declared, making a sweep of his hand "Shall be my soldiers. And you, my Ace, are the First of them."

So with that, Joe's boys for war became his to teach, to train, to shape into that thing that Joe wanted. That thing The Ace had become accidentally and all on his own merit.

So he ran his tongue over Her tooth in his mouth, and turned to the group before him. Twenty in total, all the fingers on both hands twice, or two people's hands counted together.

The Ace barked out two words.

"Fight me."

So they did, one at a time because they had not learned to fight dirty, or for survival like he had and he beat them down so that they had no choice but to consider him leader. When they were cowed, and their eyes trailed the ground but did not look at his face, he helped them up, brushed the blood from their mouths, and made them in his image.

He spoke to them in short bursts, 'no' and 'don't do that' and 'you dumb shlanger' and they looked to him with reverence because he was the First, and he knew so much and made them strong. For The Ace knew to cover their skin in white to protect them from the sun, and to rim their eyes in black to cut down the glare. He knew how to pull water from the desert and how to sing the Dingo's songs, and to fix an engine and win a fight.

The boys followed him and learned what he had learned and listened to the Immortan's pretty words and never noticing as the old Gang was slowly killed off. Just told that they went to Valhalla, in the honor of the Immortan, and would live forever in that fertile land.

So while Ace made them in his image, Joe turned them to his own.

From the Immortan they learned lies lies lies and they thrived on them. Joe kept them stupid and happy by pushing them to breathe exhaust fumes. Then Joe's outriders stumbled upon a stock of silver spray paint, Joe convinced them that Chrome was the highest honor, so they took to huffing that instead. They took to Chrome-ing themselves in the Immortan's Glory as they rode into battle, and those who were lost were soon replaced, and a cycle began, and grew, and lasted. Until there were no boys left from that initial group. Just The Ace. He thought nothing of it for that was how it had always been anyway. He was Joe's First, the Prime, the next holy thing to the Immortan himself.

Somewhere along the line they were given the name War Boys, and around that name they build a culture. One made of white paint, black eyes, and silver lips. One where they fought, and fucked, and scarred themselves because a few of the older boys remembered the last of the Scar Bearers, and thought them worthy. They had a culture of death and cars and engines and chrome and over all other things, the word of the Immortan.

The Ace stood to the side and watched them. Watched them fight and die, and live short glorious lives and he pitied them for they knew nothing else.

While The Ace existed and grew older, only a few of the other boys grew older with him. Those that did were honored and called Imperator, and were put in charge of those who were younger. Until they too died, and were replaced, and died and were replaced and on and on it went.

The Ace remained and watched and hated. He watched as the Immortan grew in power and locked his wives away. He watched as the Immortan began to grow old, and grow sick, and have children who were just as sick as he. He watched as the War Boys fell to the sickness of tumors, and night fevers, and mutations, and defects. He began to wonder when the effects of the war that destroyed the world would show on him.

He is Seven Thousand Three hundred Days and Seven years old when the smallest of lumps begins to grow under the skin of his neck. He knows that eventually he will die from it, just like all the other war boys, but he thinks of Her and his promise not to die until he sees the Immortan dead and he begins to plot.

He plots of a way to break the Immortan, to make him low, and fear as he has never feared before in his life. Only to find that there is no way for him to do so.

He is too deeply entrenched in War Boy culture; too many eyes follow him with reverence, too many eyes to sabotage without getting caught. He has never had the privacy granted to the Imperators, for Joe has always needed him visible, to be the epitome of War Boy. Ace is a cog in a very visible machine that runs on unwavering devotion to the man he hates most in the world. The Ace is a failure in this one, most important thing and has never hated himself more.

Fourteen days later, a young woman is brought to the Citadel, the prize of a scouting party who were sent to raid on the edge of Joe's territory. She is tall, muscular and her hair is long and blond. Her left arm is broken and bleeding below the elbow. She fights the hands of the War Boys, fights Joe when he takes her chin in his hand and calls her wife. She is furious, and wild, and so free despite the bonds holding her that the Ace cannot help but compare the woman to Her. Suddenly he wants the woman to be his as She was always his.

He thinks this and watches Joe take the girl away and lock her in with his other wives. The Ace snarls and turns and buries himself into repairing the War Rigs, and training the Pups, and beating down the War Boys and he seethes, and hates and hates so hard he forgets.

He goes to war, and chooses an Imperator, and loses that Imperator, and leads his own Crew, and kills a man in Barter Town, and gains another lump, and lives hot and fierce as the sun overhead.

The Ace is Seven Thousand Six Hundred and Sixty Five days and Seven Years old when that woman stumbles into the workshop, down an arm, but just as fierce. The Ace smiles so that Her tooth is visible in his mouth and pushes his way through the crowd to stand before the woman and says.

"You fancy yourself a War Boy now?"

She glares at him and bares her teeth. "Well I'm not a wife."

"Come on then." He says and turns, and the other War Boys watch him and grumble protest, but do not stop him.

She follows.


	3. They pierced my hands and feet

My bone clings to my skin and flesh, and I have escaped only by the skin of my teeth.

Job 19:20

He took her though the termite tunnels that made up the War Boys' barracks until they stood in the Prep Shop. The room was filled with tubs of white clay, and pots of black grease, and sharp flat blades for shaving. The room was intersected by low stone benches. Basins filled with water and dusty clay lined the walls. The two materials waiting to be mixed to make a slit that sticks to the skin like engine grease. A single sliver of mirror propped within a crack in the wall. It was late in the day and the room was empty.

"My name," He said, "Is Ace."

The Wife stared at him from the doorway. Her eyes were sharp and bright and the color of greens that have gone to rot.

He huffed out a breath when she did not answer. "Tell me yours before you're given a new one, Wife."

"Furiosa." She snarled at him and shoved her way into the room. She stopped near the middle, eyeing the benches then turned to him. "Why did you take me here?"

"You want to be a War Boy, and then you got to look like one." He waved a hand toward his body. "Wife Silks won't do you good here. Take 'em off."

He moved past her into a smaller alcove filled with spare leathers. Each War boy was issued a single pair, which they are to repair and maintain throughout their lives. There are spares however, for Pups who have grown to boys and Ace brushes past the crippled attendant to take one.

The Ace returned to find her still clothed , face tight with an emotion he had no name for. He tossed the pants onto a bench and ordered her again. "Take 'em off."

"No." Her hands fist the material at her thighs, the white cloth wrapped round her in some sort of shift, not long enough to cover her knees nor most of her upper leg and low and tight around her chest.

"Girl," Ace tried. Exasperation is evident in his voice.

The woman snarls at him, all clenched fists and thunderous eyes.

"Furiosa." He amended, "You say you're not a Wife, that you are War Boy. Fine. You want to be what we are, fine. But you can't go half way. You go with a hand on the shift and your foot on the gas. There is no halfcocked. You either are us, or you aren't. If you are you will kill, and paint yourself white and black, and wear leathers, and there will be no softness. If you want easy you go back to being a Wife, or you go to the Wretched."

He had never said so many words at once, and he did not know what came over him for them to fall from his mouth like that. She didn't know this, just seemed to gather her will.

"You talk a lot." She told him. "Get rid of my hair first."

He huffed. "Fine girl. Shave it or clip it short." There had been a few female War Boys over the years, and most of them preferred to keep some hair on their heads.

He loomed by the doorway and watched as Furiosa gathered a razor and strop and sharpened the blade. She held the long blond hair up and away from her skull and moved to cut.

The Ace had her wrist in his hand before she could complete the motion and ignored the way she jerked and twitched in his clutch. "Not like that. You want to take your skin off?"

He pulled the razor from her grasp and pushed her to the bench. Her fingers wrapped around the edge and she watched him warily. He pulled a pair of hand clippers from the basket, and set them against her skull. Clipping away blond, his hand heavy on the top of her head, tipped her this way and that until the long strands are gone and her head is covered in uneven fuzz. He tipped an oil jar into his palm and slid the stuff over her hair, then took the razor to it. He was experienced in those motions, but even then he was not good enough to avoid all the nicks and cuts from a near dry razoring. Furiosa bore it stoically, only wincing when the blade slipped.

"Now. Clothes off." He left her to return the razor and to gather a bowl of premixed white. He set it on the bench and twirled a finger through it, breaking up the hardened outer crust.

"Paint goes on where skin shows. Front, back, face, ears. Don't bother with your legs, the leathers soak up the worst of the sun. Just do some below the waistband. "

He turned his eyes to her and saw she had resigned herself to this. The white cloth pulled off but held protectively to the front of her body. She eyed him warily, her legs tense.

He took a palm full of the sludge and wiped it down the outside of her full arm, spreading it over her shoulder and the back of her neck methodically and with little interest. He has covered most of her back when her elbow smacks him firmly in the face.

"I can do it." She stepped away from him, snatching up the bowl.

"Fine." He shook his head and wiped the excess from his fingers onto his own side.

Furiosa finished up her lower back quickly, haste leaving uneven trails on her skin. She pulled her leathers on before the paint had dried and Ace opened his mouth to tell her doing so would just cause it to itch fiercely when it dried, but her glare held him back.

The leathers sat high on her hips where most of the female War Boys wore theirs low. Her hands slathering white onto her torso, perfunctory passes over breast and half an arm, before she turned away to the mirror to cover her face.

The Ace ignores her once she had started, fingers instead pulling up her Wife silks. He eyed her, then it, and then ripped a length from its hem. "Wait for the paint to dry then wrap down your chest."

When she had done so he tosses her the top of the dress and she pulled it on, tucking the loose ragged end inside her pants. The Ace ran his thumb through the black paint and turned to her, taking her chin firmly in hand, he swiped the black under each eye, then over the eyelids. Anointing her like a skull.

"You failed the Immortan as a wife." The Ace said, the words flat and tasteless on his tongue. "But you won't fail him as a War Boy."

He hails the Immortan and twines his fingers to the V8 because the actions are rote, and deeply ingrained. The movements and vocals are his act of survival though conformity. The girl flinches, hesitates, then twines her fingers and moves her arms above her head. He presses a firm hand to her shoulder and gives a stiff nod.

The girl would struggle to submit to these false idols, just as the Ace had. Like Ace she has seen Joe wane under the weight of the long years. The Immortan is no immortal despite the name he has built himself.

The Ace could give proof to Joe's false immortality like no other could. A fact the Immortan once knew but has long forgotten. The man's belief in his own legend and the power of his indoctrination clouded his vision. Joe had forgotten that Ace was not just any other War Boy, that his title was Alpha not omega, and that he was Prime.

Furiosa too could pose such a threat, knowing Joe the way she did, if she only got enough status within the ranks for her words to be heeded. She would have to do so carefully of course, a little seed of doubt planted within opportune moments. In sentences that could be taken two ways. If she was sneaky, and hard, and smart enough to do it.

For a moment The Ace imagined it, the Citadel rising up under her words, succeeding where he failed. But it passed as quickly as it came. There was no overcoming Joe, nothing short of death.

"You come from Gas Town or the Bullet Farm?" He asked once she was painted and blacked and they pressed forward through the halls.

"No. Farther than that." She kept picking at the white on her frame, laid down so thick it cracked like the parched Salt Flats to the west.

"Got any skills?"

"What?" She stepped careful around a Doof Drummer sprawled flat and snoring on the floor.

"Not all War Boys go to war. The best of the Revheads, the true Blackthumbs stay in Citadel as Repair Boys. The weak ones and the functioning cripples help the Organic Mechanic, or become Dirt Pushers. "

"I know guns and motorcycles."

"Chrome." He said with a nod. Less reverent than most would use the word.

He brought her to the Garage. A large cavern made bright through multiple skylights, which let both sun and fume filter through. War Boys tuned and repaired their personal rides, Imperator Crew's swarmed over Rigs, Pole cats and Lancers strengthened their perches, or practiced their throws. It was a sea of white limbs trothing.

Ace led her past it all to the central bay.

He may never have been called Imperator, but The Ace kept a crew. His Boys consisted mostly of older Pups who showed promise or Boys who would shine so chrome if they lived past their first year of runs. The Ace never took on more than twenty, never passing more than the number of his initial group. He took them in, trained them up, and spat them out. Then sat back and watched as they were snatched by others. His Boys were taken by Imperators, or other high ranked crews, anyone with enough power or status to make it worth leaving The Ace. His Boys were hated by the unranked, and revered by their new commanders. It was a Known fact. Ace made War Boys who were more than fodder, who could think as they fought. Not just chase Valhalla on any short patrol. Something desired by any successful crew.

He and Furiosa stopped before a bike, which was more scrap than function. It had been smashed to parts on the last run and Fletch, one of Ace's Blackthumbs, had been knocking it back into shape.

"Fletch." Ace said, "Show this Pup what you know; I want her useful in the next seven days."

With a final firm press between Furiosa's shoulders, he left them.

Furiosa was not a bad acquisition nor was she the best. She took to repairs well enough and her gun work was worthy. But even when they secured a replacement arm from the Organic Mechanic's limb makers, she struggled to win fights.

The limb they obtained was strong enough for a bare skeleton, designed for the boy who wore it to adjust and improve. It latched firmly about her torso with a leather cinch. The first time he helped her pull it tight, Furiosa scoffingly called it a corset. Not a word the Ace knew nor had context for so he settled for nodding grimly.

"You fear pain." He told her after one spar. "You fear pain, you fear the world."

"No." Was all Furiosa said in response. She wiped her flesh arm against her sweating brow and walked away.

It was not easy with her those early days. She was prickly, and wary, but never fell to outright violence like other War Boys. She did not fit easily into the world he knew, and watching her skirt past physical confrontation filled him with endless confusion.

Furiosa did not like it when anyone got close. She tried to keep them all at an arm's length, a hard feat in the cramped barracks. War Boys lived on top of each other. It was how it had always been. Pups and low ranking boys slept in great masses on the ground. Higher ranks got sleeping ledges, carved out of the sheetrock, they lined the halls and some of the Barrack rooms, which supported rusting bunks wedged together like rocks in a wall. Each of the narrow beds slept two, mostly Driver / Lancer pairs, or pole cat counterbalances. Imperators earned their slivers of a room, only big enough to squeeze a cot, or a pile of blankets if they preferred sleeping in a group. Ace heard the Doof and Drum Boys slung hammocks in the Garage over their wagon but never saw it, usually just found them crashed out in hallways, always underfoot.

From the first day Furiosa refused to bed down with any of Ace's crew, though Yox had lost his lancer and had space to sleep her. Instead she wore treads in the ground, fists clenched, and feet falling heavy in her boots. Getting angrier the more the other War Boys reached to her and called, offering to share space. Her status as a former Wife was easily seen, evident in the grease smeared smock worn round her chest. Touching her was near as good as a look from the Immortan himself. She had been his before providing him the disappointment of girl born children or malformed sons. It wasn't the first time a Wife had been exiled, but she was the first to become a War Boy.

The Ace watched it all from his ledge, higher up and more spacious than all the others. He had lined it with thick sleeping mats and blankets. Filled it with a stash gathered from his many runs. Dented cans with pull top lids, colorful trinkets and sun bleached image captures, pieces of dried fur that were soft on his fingers, but never quite matched his memory of Her.

"Furiosa." He called when he bored of watching her slap away reverent hands. "Come up here."

Her head snapped to him and she bared her teeth. "I won't sleep with you."

"Then bed down elsewhere, or you won't be sleeping at all." He said, and then moved back from the ledge, rolling into his blankets and putting her out of his mind.

A week passed before her head poked over the rim of his kip. Her eyes bruised black and face pale.

"I won't sleep with you." Furiosa told The Ace, even as she climbed over him and pulled his blankets over her body.

"Then lay awake all night," He said, "I don't care."

Ace yanked one blanket from her grasp and burrowed down. His back to her, he looked out over the edge, listening to the boys below settle and sleep. He heard her shuffle and squirm until her breath evened, soft and gentle. Then he left himself drift.

It became something of a ritual. Her appearance in his kip, her insistence she would not sleep, his ambivalent return.

Until one night he spoke first. "In the Vault. Did you know Hannah?"

"Did you sleep with her?" She asked voice hard.

The corners of his mouth turned down. He could not see the reasoning behind her words. "Yes. For countless days."

"And she's in the vault."

"She was." His tongue ran over Her tooth. "She was one of Joe's wives."

"And you slept with her?" Furiosa's tone incredulous.

"I slept with lots of his wives. I don't understand why you're asking."

"I don't believe it."

"You got heat sickness?" He slapped a palm against her skin. "Your mouth's runnin' crazy."

"Joe must have had it if he let you fuck his wives." She scoffed.

"I…No." He winced at the twist in his insides. The thought of him using Hannah that way... "No. Never fucked them. Just slept. Like we do."

He twitched under his blanket, and the dim light showed the rolling fabric. "Hannah would be getting old now. Even for a Full Life."

Furiosa was quiet for a time." There are no old women. Just Miss Giddy."

Over a breakfast of boiled oats and mealy bugs, Furiosa asked,

"This Hannah, was she your mother?"

Heads snapped to them, the Boys around them falling silent, almost reverent.

"My mother was a Dingo." The Ace replied as he lifted a spoon.

The War Boys hooted with laughter but The Ace did not smile.

Fletch and Furiosa finished the motorbike in twenty eight days. The Blackthumb gave Ace a single nod, and he knew she had passed Fletch's testing. To celebrate, Ace took her into the wastes. He drove them in his own car, old muscle, heavy black steel and chrome. He had long since scratched Her into the driver side door, Her tail erect, Her teeth a snarl.

"Usually Pups start this young. Get paired with a driver and they go into the wastes. Sit a lap and learn to steer and change gears before they get big enough to reach the pedals."

He slowed the car to a stop on the dirt road between Citadel and Bullet Farm. Stepped into the heat as he spoke. "You're too big for that, so you get to learn both in one day."

They switched seats and he told her about stick shifts, and the clutch, and when he was done he pointed down the road and let her go.

Furiosa may have been a decent grease monkey, and a better shot, but driving is where she was truly shine.

It has been eighty seven days since Furiosa became War Boy and she started to soften. Not her body, or her passive anger, but the fearfulness in her eye, the wariness of her gait. She lets Ace's Crew closer in day to day tasks, allowed for a brush of elbow, a touch of foot, a swipe of white covered fingers over her face when new paint was applied to sweat lined skin.

In their shared kip she let Ace rest his back against hers and woke up in the morning with her hand tight around his.

She began to fear none bar the Immortan, flinching at his gaze, the sound of his voice. Ace approved of her wariness, for the Immortan is best watched with considering eye. But he does not understand the cause of her fear.

The Immortan's wives are his most precious commodity. Each treated like fine glass. He does not strike them, nor starve them, nor make them want for water.

The Ace cannot place Furiosa's fear, and it grates. For it means he can do nothing to stop it.

The Ace lived another 400 days before the lumps on his neck grew to the size that they were visible through the skin and not just by knowing fingers. With them came the Organic Mechanics realization that The Ace was not branded.

"Just a quick burn for the Immortan, Ace," The man joked, "I'm surprised don't have one already."

In his mind The Ace snarled and swore but forced his face blank, keeping just enough War Boy fervor in his eye to stop suspicion from his next few words.

"Immortan had me on long patrol back then."

The mechanic was from before times, and it showed in his speech. "They always say there's no time like the present."

Heated steel pressed into The Ace's neck, suddenly and without warning. One of the Organic's helpers. Ace flinched and growled and twisted away. Skin pulling as it yanked off the brand.

"See, just a little pinch." The Organic cackled.

"A little fucking warning next time!" The Ace seethed, taking a swing at the man. But the Mechanic was used to angry patients and jigged away.

"Come back when those tumors start to bite." The man called as he moved on to the next ailing Boy.

The Ace hated. Hated how they thought they could claim him, that he was an owned thing, hated every single fiery skull he passed. He hated each and every of the Immortan's sigils, from wheel, to skull, to bullet.

His fingers felt at his nape and came away wet. He walked through the halls smelling of cooked meat and ownership.

Furiosa found him later that night lying stiffly on his blankets. His face pressed flat to the carved stone in an attempt to keep still.

"What are you doing Ace?" She asked.

"Laying here." He returned petulantly.

She took a deep breath as she hauled herself into his bunk and flinched. She knew the smell, knew it well, and recently.

"Oh." She inched nearer to him. Not enough to press close but so that she didn't have to stretch to reach. Her fingers pressed high on his neck, near up by the joint of the skull. Gentle but it still hurt. A hiss escaping him and he shuddered her off.

"You were never marked. " More of a statement than a question but he could feel her curiosity.

"Leave it, Furiosa."

He told her and so she did.

The Immortan called the Ace one night pulling him from sleep to navigate the War Boy flooded halls. The Ace had long given up trying to step over the tangled limbs of Pup and low ranked Boy, and just stepped wherever he found space without head. The masses of tangled limbs lighted the closer he came to the Vault and the Immortan. The Ace found the man standing in his warren of rooms, a pale specter. He wheezed air, as he stared out Corpus's telescope. Maybe viewing far burning fires, the stars above, possibly chasing the seven sisters in the sky.

"I want you to take a party north." Joe finally said. "Take everything you find, but mostly, look for books."

The Ace scratched his jaw with ragged fingers. "On what?"

"Genetics."

Genetics. A word he could spell, but had no meaning for. He nodded, turned and left.

He drove north, Furiosa on a bike to his left. Twobit, on lance behind him. The new pair Morsov and Lock riding the Sweep car. Yox and Kilo hauling the trailer behind them.

They drove out in the sand for a week, heading due north before breaking for settlements and old groupings of buildings, the old roads broken to little more than gravel and dust.

They found broken cars which they gutted, dusty cans of food, labels long gone. Ace took all with the pull tabs and hid them down in the passenger side foot well. They found half rotted books, disintegrating clothing, metal bits, glass shards, and a feral cat.

It was a mangy thing that Yox and Morsov spent half a day chasing but never caught. The Ace let them play in the sun, and sipped the thick sugar water from a can which was filled with fruit in half moon pieces the color of the sun when it fell at night. Furiosa sat on the hood of his car, and he offered a sip to her, and she hummed and smiled at the taste.

They moved on when night fell, momentarily content.

Days passed and he found few books. They were already rare, most burned by bombs in the First War, others taken for kindling, or long ago scavenged by others. The lack of success weighed on The Ace heavily. Not the fear of upsetting the Immortan but knowing of what would happen if he did. The Immortan had no bone in his body for forgiveness. Ace remembered the culling of Joe's first gang. All those who could remember the old ways and could prove a threat to the new regime. The Ace had only escaped the cleansing due to his silence and usefulness as a figurehead.

They had stopped for the night, setting camp between the three cars. They ate vinegar soaked greens, mealy worms, and a handful of millet. Sipped water and Mother's Milk and set watch, and most of them huddled down in the sand, lying close to ward off the desert chill.

Yox and Lock shared a conversation of eyebrows and jaw twitches before slinking off into the night.

Sex was a common activity for War Boys. Distracting, fun, and usually easy enough to find another willing body, the sounds of it echoed through the barracks at night. It used to drive Furiosa into violent twitches when the boys around them set too. She had slept better in the Wastes, with all of them quietly about her, at least until tonight.

The Ace screwed Imperators because for a long time they were the only ones old enough to fuck. It started with his original group of twenty. The lot of them going through the change together. They had limited interests, food, fighting and fucking. Endless interest in fucking. They fell upon each other, all hands and teeth and thrusting hip.

Some of the White Painted and Scar Bearers were still around, and they cat called and took the older boys as bed warmers.

"With no women it's alright to take a boy." One told The Ace as they repaired a drive train. "But the fucking always goes down the totem pole. Never up. As their leader, you give it, you don't take it. Understand?"

The Ace nodded and when his boys came looking to him for a lay, he told them the way of the land and they either accepted it or went to find a more willing partner.

There came a time when those boys were raised to Imperator and a new batch of War Boy grew under them. They took to Ace's way and they took those below them, and down and down it went.

He would have thought nothing of Yox and Lock but for Furiosa, who twisted and shuddered against his back.

"What's messing you?" He asked her.

She rolled away from him, reinstating that distance from her early days. "They sound…pleased."

He didn't bother deigning that with a response.

"When Joe took his wives…he was the only one who sounded like that."

"Maybe it's just not as shiny for women." The Ace guessed, swiping a hand over his eyes.

He could feel her shrug from the shift of the sand.

"Maybe the wives are doing it wrong." He said, trying to get a spoken response.

She scoffed at him. "How would you know? You never slept with a wife."

"Never had a chance to. I've been screwing Imperator ass for years. They call for Crew, Crew calls for War Boy and War Boy takes War Boy. Everyone knows that."

"No one's taking me." She said.

"Course not." He agreed, rolling his eyes to look up at the stars. "You never offered."

Morning dawns and The Ace leads them to the old city, barren and scavenged, but he can think of nowhere else to find Immortan's books.

There are others who exist within this no man's land, but it is largely abandoned, too parched for more than the most desperate to inhabit.

"You want a library," Furiosa said, "that's what Giddy called the book places."

Hours pass before they find one, tucked in the shadow of two larger forms. There was a sign once, but now it reads B Y. The Ace forces a rusted door open and enters, Furiosa at his side. The others cannot read and wait outside with the cars, protecting their scrap from scavengers.

Inside the brick building there are few books left on shelves. Most repurposed as scattered pages across the floor or taken for kindling. They pull what's left and browse the contents, eyes skimming for lists in that back of the pages, feverishly looking for one certain word. Of the seventeen intact books they find only one that makes a passing mention to Genetics. Ace takes it to his car and knows it will not be enough.

They turned their head lights south, and made their way back to the Citadel. The return drive was shorter than the trip out and with each passing mile a weight sinks into the Ace's stomach. Like he had swallowed engine sludge and his insides couldn't burn through it.

Slowly the Great Rock rose on the horizon and they were greeted by a passing patrol. They were escorted into the Citadel like conquering heroes, as if they had tales of Valhalla itself. The hauling car rose on the lift first, only to be swarmed by War Pups, tasked with inventory and sorting. The rest of the patrol soon followed.

The Ace took his time in the Garage, spending useless minutes checking oil lines, ignoring the book on his passenger seat.

Furiosa approached him and wedged herself under the belly of his great beast so that they lay shoulder to shoulder and stared up at the slowly corroding metal.

"You look sick." She said quietly. A set of words no half-life War Boy wanted to hear.

He struggled to formulate a response that would not cause him to be written off as weak.

"The Immortan is not forgiving."

"No." Furiosa's voice grew hard. "He's not."

By the time The Ace reported to Joe, he had spent less time mustering courage, and more time resigning to his fate.

Joe said nothing when the Ace appeared in his Warren clutching a single book. The man simply pulled it from Ace's grip before his blue eyes read through the measly block of text. Then Joe dropped the book to the ground.

"Useless."

Joe's hand darts out quick and hits hard. Red blooming under thinly applied white on the Ace's cheek.

"Report to the Mechanic." Joe tells him, turning away. "Tell him I sent you."

The Ace turns and leaves the Warren. He walks slowly downwards into the darkening pits. So deep within the center of the Citadel that even the harsh light struggles to penetrate. He entered the Mechanic's Chop Shop, resigned.

The Mechanic keeps him for three long days. Punishments rarely filter down to the man; most War Boys who disappoint the Immortan do not live to see the Organic, simply bleed out where ever the Immortan found his displeasure. Only the War Boys Joe wants to ruin ever get sent into the Flesh Shop.

Ace is taken to a closet of a room. Dark even with a sputtering tallow candle, the fat likely human, and smells rancid and acrid as it burned.

"It's a shame really." The Organic had said, even as his hands fastened restraints around Ace's wrists, the tight metal squeezing and pinching the skin. "You got so far into life without failing the Immortan. I might call it amazing really. Astonishing."

The Organic slid the chain that connected the restrains onto a hook and ratcheted him up, Ace's bare toes drifting above the ground by inches. The suspended weight of his body pulling hard on his wrist and shoulders. He could feel the burn of his muscles and the stretch of his back. A few of his vertebra popped.

There had come a moment in the Ace's life when he realized would never escape the Immortan. That he would always fall to the man's power, his control of his life. He had come to accept that to survive he would have to comply. To praise the V8, to take chrome into his mouth, to be everything a War Boy was supposed to be. He had resigned to the fact that to live he had to give up his body and his mind to the Immortan.

The Organic sighed heavily and waved one of his assistants into the room. A large War Boy, mute, down an arm, and hobbling on a strut leg. He carried a long, thin, leather strap. Too bulky to be considered a whip, too reminiscent of one to be anything else.

"Just close your eyes and think of the Immortan." The Organic said as he took his leave.

The mute brought the strap down hard and The Ace hated.

Hated himself for ever trying to open that car trunk, for not running away with Her in the night, for never killing the Immortan when he had the chance. For not chasing Valhalla and throwing himself to his own demise.

The Organic had The Ace for three days. On the morning of the forth, the Mechanic pulled him from the hook, rubbed salt into his weeping back and sent The Ace away.

His skin had been split from ankle to brand, crisscrossing up his back but never daring to reach his front. Eyes followed him through the corridors. Whispers starting as he passed.

The Ace had fallen. He wore the marks of the failure, of the Immortan's disappointment. The Ace had failed so hard the Immortan kept him alive as an example. He would not gain entrance into Valhalla; He would never again feel the Immortan's gaze. He had failed. He had failed and he had lost the protection of his status.

The Ace stumbled into the Garage and over to his bay where Furiosa and the others made work on their vehicles.

He halted before them and swayed. Fletch looked at him, blue eyes wide. Yox made to reach for him before Morsov stayed his hand.

"You're not my Crew." The Ace spoke. "Find another."

He pushed away and made his way through the halls until he was at his sleeping ledge. He crawled up, lay down, and bled over his blankets.

By nightfall it is known across the Citadel. The Ace has fallen from favor.

When Furiosa came to bed down that night she found The Ace wedged as far back into his nook as possible. She halted on the precipice of the ledge for a moment before pulling herself up.

"You alright?" She asked, brushing fingers over his palm.

"You shouldn't be here." His voice was rough. "You need to go away."

He shoved at her weakly, his hand pressing into her bent knee and she just stared down at him frowning.

"Why? I don't care that you failed the Immortan."

He shook his head, brow scraping against the rock floor. "You won't be safe here. Go bunk with Morsov."

He shoved at her again and this time she slowly moved back.

They came for him late that night. Three of the Imperators who were never part of his crew, three he had never cared to share pleasure with. They are hungry for the being who gained the Immortan's Wrath. Hungry for a War Boy who no longer has the Immortan's Protection. Hungry to take what had always eluded them because of rank, and status, and the benefits of being First.

They jerked him from his bunk; put their hard fists in his side and against his face. They yanked and kicked and pulled, until they had him in the Prep Room. They shoved him down among the tubs of white clay and black grease. He smashed his head against one of the long stone benches, and the welts and splits on his back oozed

The Imperators held him down and took him one by one. Took him as carelessly as their Kamikrazee War Boys took to Valhalla. The Ace had left his screams in the Organic Mechanic's room; they earned no sound from him aside from harsh gasps of air.

The Ace bit into the flesh of his wrist until blood filled his mouth, and Her tooth hit and ground against bone.

When they finished with him, they left him lying amidst the white slit and black grease. He himself could almost be distilled down into those two components, white skin and black bruises. Were it not for the blood that dripped from his back that was red red red.

The sound of their footsteps died away, and Ace unhinged his jaw from his arm. Spat blood and saliva to the floor. He cleaned himself, applied fresh paint and grease and stumbled back through the halls.

He limped across Doof Drummers, huddled tight in a corridor, he did his best to step only in the open spaces but even then he managed to wake one. A hand closing around his ankle.

"Boss." A voice came drowsily; The Ace stared down at a well-known face.

Servo had been one of his before the call of drum and thumping Doof Machine became too strong.

"Not your boss anymore, Servo." The Ace ground out.

The thin boy shook his head and pushed himself up. "You never stopped."

The drummer took Ace's hand in his own and pulled him through the corridors until they reached the Garage. He pointed up into the great ceiling toward a corner that never caught the light.

"Doof's got a cargo net strung in that blackness. He won't mind if you crash there a few days."

Servo shoved The Ace toward series of gouges in the wall that would work well enough like the rungs of a ladder, and left.

The climb was worse than anything. The movement harassing all the pains he suffered the past four days. When he finally pulled himself into the thick rope web, he let his body loose, falling into the netting on his stomach, his back to the air. He had never felt more helpless, never felt so vulnerable and weak.

He finally understood why Furiosa flinched and always slept with him between her and the ledge at night. Why she started so violently at the sound of Boys screwing below. Why she never offered herself to others when the days drew on. He felt like he has failed her.


	4. wild beasts of the earth

And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.

Revelation 6:8

The netting high above the Garage was secluded but never quiet. The sounds of repair and white painted men echoed through the cavernous space and rang hollowly in The Ace's ear. He was too delirious to use the sound to mark the passing of time, but used it as a gage to prove he still clung to life. For death could never be so loud, even in Joe's Valhalla.

He lay on his stomach in the sweltering, oil tainted heat of the Doof's nest for three long days. Body shaking through the burning heat of infection and trauma that the Organic's salt crust didn't ward off. His teeth chattered in his jaw and caught his tongue as he drifted in and out, nerves freezing though his body burned. Dripped sweat into the coarse hemp until his body had no moisture to spare and even the blood stopped flowing from his wounds and just sat, congealing, atop the layered scours.

The first time Servo came to him, bearing a canteen filled with a mouthful of Mother's Milk and a cake of dried Green, The Ace was too far gone to notice, just took down the liquid and writhed on the thick, coiled hemp. The low moans escaping his mouth easily covered by the clamor below.

The Ace drifted out and woke alone. He could see beams of sun cutting through the darkness and saw how it dissipated over the floor. He watched the crews down below scuttle like termites over their cars. His eyes drifted shut.

The shakes came and went. Hitting fierce like the Night Sweats many of the Half Lives suffered. His joints took an ache, and his mind was loose and running like a painted body on a hell hot day.

"Easy now, Boss." Servo muttered as he crawled to lie beside The Ace, pulling him near so that they lay chest to chest, the demoted War Boy's head cradled against the drummer's shoulders. "Just take it easy, it'll pass."

The Ace woke with Servo snug against him, their legs wrapped together like snakes. The younger man's scarred lips muttered scattered fragments into The Ace's ear.

"I can't hear you, Servo." Ace told him hoarsely.

The brush of skin stopped and Servo shifted against him, moved the arm that had been pillowing their heads. "You done rusting?"

"Yeah. Done rusting."

The drummer pulled away and sat up, the dusty cloth of his pants pressing rough against The Ace's arm.

"Spent some time down below." The Drummer started, his fingers tapping staccato against his boot. "Found news of interest. Though, mm, you won't want to hear."

"That dull huh?"

"Not a chance chrome under the sand, no."

"Lay it out then." Ace muttered and heaved himself up to sit.

Servo was quiet for a time, occupying himself with settling against The Ace's side so that he fit under the older man's arm like a washer and bolt.

"Your Crew got scavenged by other factions' early first shift…" The drummer began, and using his words, a story stitched itself together.

The news of The Ace's descent spread fast. The five Imperators gathered their factions and initiated their play. Be it through fights, or blackmail, or the Immortan's favor, they would have fought, bled, and manipulated to instate themselves as Prime.

Servo told of how an old member of Ace's Crew came out on top. The cunning, broad shouldered Leviathan, scraping through to the position with a bloodied smile, and dripping knife.

He told of how Furiosa and Kilo were taken on by the new Prime Imperator, and Morsov and Twobit being snatched up by others. He told of how Fletch simply merged into the ranks of the Repair Boys, and the rest of his boys ghosted away like a rock under desert sand.

The Doof Drummer told of how the Ace's kip was claimed by Furiosa, Fletch, and Morsov. How they settled down amongst his accumulated blankets and furs, and snarled at all who dared to come near. And there were many who did, wanting his stockpiles, his far removed den.

"And, hmm, they took your car." Servo said, his hand scrubbing at the back of his neck. "Driver/ Lancer team snagged her. Fanged two other pairs to do it."

"They started modding?"

"Yeah, blacked over your…dog thing… on the driver door, has the Immortan's Skull now."

"Slaggers." Ace hissed, hate rising hard and hot in his chest, doing nothing to overpower the pain in his back, just added to the sharp pull on his skin.

The drummer hummed and pulled away from The Ace. "Don't rust over it. The Wheel Stealer Curse'll get 'em. They'll die soft."

"Yeah." Ace agreed, and watched as the boy wobbled his way across the sagging net and disappeared over the edge.

The Ace lay there in the darkness until the heat and fever drew him under.

It was late in the night of the third day when Servo returned, skin hot from the sun and sand scored. He offered a canteen of water and sliver of meat jerky which he split with a thin edged knife.

"The new Prime noticed you hadn't been seen since the Garage and sent Pups out looking. Talk is he doesn't like some of the rumors of your corpse being shoved in some nook to rot. Then again, he could just wanta make sure you're dead."

The Ace huffed a laugh. "I'm not some Buzzard that's going to go thump in the night."

"Leviathan won't keep Prime Imperator if he ain't twitchy." Servo said with a shrug.

"He doesn't have Immortan's favor?"

"Some. Maybe. Not like you did."

They chewed the jerked meat in silence, jaws working hard to masticate the leather hard strip.

"Farrow hates his second." The drummer started after a dry swallow. "Only keeps him around 'cause he's got a near perfect throw on the lance."

"I know it." The Ace replied. His brow furrowed and his eyes flicked blankly over the space in front of him as he considered Servo's intended meaning.

The War boy in question, Farrow, was a Cycle Rider of some renown. A Half Life with a touch that made the two wheeled beasts purr and go harder longer under his hand. The Boy was however, phenomenally bad with weapons. Took to riding with a partner, someone to throw lance and sling bullets that would actually hit the intended target.

Farrow was popular with the Imperators; so popular he couldn't be claimed by a single crew without sparking infighting. It was also known that he had trouble keeping Lancers. Had a bad habit of losing them on the Fury Road, replacing them with whatever body was nearest.

So when Ace dropped from the ceiling and drove Farrow's current Lancer's head into a bloody mash on the floor, Farrow did little more than sigh and say, "You better not slow me down."

"Let's take your beastie into the sands and find out, hmm?" The Ace grinned, Her tooth flashing under his taut lip.

Furiosa was waiting for him by the Lift, when he and Farrow returned from their trial run. Her arms were crossed and her mouth was pulled in a firm line. Her eyes barely scraped over Farrow before coming to rest hard and hungry on The Ace.

Ace's fingers were black with explosive dust and left dark streaks across his painted neck as he swept his hand over skin.

"Furiosa." He greeted, eyes flicking from her face to the sand that had crawled into the creases of his pants and the laces of his boot.

"You're drought cursed slag," The woman growled as she walloped him hard on the shoulder. "I've been trying to find you."

Her flesh hand wrapped under the cloth around his neck and pulled him forward so that their foreheads came crashing together.

"Then it's a good thing I never put you on Overwatch." The Ace huffed, pulling his smarting skull from hers.

She led him through the garage not knowing that his heart thumped hard and painful in his chest, too fast, too hard, and too wary for Crew. His hands shoved deep in pockets to hide the shiver in his nerves, that made his fingers go rattle rattle rattle against his leg.

She took him to the Sleeping Racks, stopped before the gaps of carved stone that could be climbed to reach his nest. "Crew's helped me keep an eye on it. Never would have thought keeping squatters out would be a full time gig."

"Rats like that can be persistent." He agreed after a moment of hard silence. His eye flicked to her face and she met his glance full on.

"Sleep with me tonight." She told him. "I'm tired of Morsov kicking in his sleep."

The Ace nodded and she clasped his shoulder once before walking away. His hands shook and shivered long after the echo of her boots faded away and his heart stopped beating blame into his ribs.

When his nerves had calmed he climbed the wall slowly, pausing when the stretch and pull of muscle sent his back into thunderous spasms.

Fletch waited for him up top, seated against the far wall, a blanket over his shoulder and a flip book in hand. The Repair Boy looked up when he felt The Ace's eyes on him, his mouth splitting into a bright smile.

"Heya, Ace."

"Fletch." The Ace drawled slowly, eyeing his old crew member before slowly pulling himself over the edge.

The Grease Monkey moved his foot so that there was space for Ace lay down and burrow deep in his blankets. A few second past before Fletch's toes brushed against Ace's ribs, pressing into the pit of his arm.

Ace lay there, listening to the flip flip flip of paper, and feeling the occasional twitch of Fletch's toes against his side. Slowly his eyes drifted shut, and he hardly moved for the next five days.

After last light, Furiosa and Morsov appeared, shuffling over the ledge with flying elbows and kicking heels. They snapped and snarled playfully before shuffling around on the narrow ledge, until the four of them lay intertwined. Furiosa against the far wall, her chest pressing against Ace's back, her forehead against the joint of his neck. Fletch had long since burrowed against Ace's front, pulling a heavy arm across his shoulders. Morsov swore and shuffled around before giving up and sprawling inelegantly across the lot of them.

Furiosa had been taken on as Rig Crew by Imperator Leviathan and was called away for a Run the morning after Ace returned. The Ace twitched and dripped with sweat and fever for the thirteen hours she spent away. Thankful for the press of crew against him but still aggravated without her in his sight.

The uneasy feeling didn't abate when she came back in the purple evening reeking of success.

The Ace could smell adrenalin on her skin and feel the grit of sand dusted paint, and feared for Furiosa was happy as he has never seen her before. Happy in a way he has never been able to give her.

News of Prime Imperator Leviathan's success spread across the Citadel like wildfire. Each action of every crew member is analyzed and lauded, each participant suddenly larger than life.

Through this, Furiosa became Known among the War Boys for her accuracy with a rifle and heavy left hook. She was fierce, she was glorious, and she burned so bright. She was everything The Ace wanted for her, and everything he hated himself for making.

War Boys spoke of her in the halls. Praised her latest kills, her skill on the bike, behind a wheel, with a gun. The Ace could hear them from where he laid above. He told himself he didn't mind it.

The Ace struggled with his mangled back for the next rise and fall of the moon. The striped flesh healed slowly, and he pulled the scabbed wounds when riding patrols with Farrow. The dust and the heat did him no favors; lay him out low and shaky for days.

There came a time when the weakness hit him so hard that Furiosa made quiet suggestions to go the Flesh Shop and seek the Organic's help. He winced, and grumbled, and ultimately ignored her for she did not understand, did not know the Mechanic's part in all of this, and the Ace had no intention of telling her.

When the worst of the infection has passed and the scabs have turned to scar, he is left with a body that is tight with new tissue and an uneven limp in his gait that causes his whole body to roll with a drunken misstep.

Seventeen days passed since The Ace had Fallen when some War Boys try to fang him. They come out of the dark halls with fume on their breaths and grease heavy over their eye. They see the scars on his back; see them as the Immortan meant for them to be seen. Badges of failure.

They come at Ace with hard knuckles, and hand pikes, and the Ace snarled and glared and showed them that he was not to be messed with, even in disgrace. He snapped a neck and ruined a hand by driving a captured shank through the palm into the limey stone and left the rest of them coughing wetly into the dry ground.

News of the dust up spread throughout the Citadel and factions form from the mist. The majority of Ace's Boys rise around him, old War Boys from his earliest Crews to the newest recruits. But for all they glare, and snarl, and fight they are greatly outnumbered by those who honor the Redeemer. Skull eyed men who snap out viciously in dark halls and Garage bays and the Mess. They strike with fist, and knife, and heavy wrench, and for three days War Boy blood flows freely through the Citadel.

It comes to a head in the Garage when the entirety of the five bays devolves into a pit fight, the repair tools gaining new employment as weaponry. Boys fight and bleed and a few wheeze their last on the floor. Bodies crumpled beneath their beloved rides.

"Enough of this." The Prime Imperator roared. Pulled the trigger of a flare gun, which burst white and choking in the middle of the fray.

Leviathan is lucky he is a large man, standing nearly on par with Rictus. He shoved easily through the raging mass, ripping apart brawlers as he went. His voice boomed and echoed and fighters part in his wake.

The Prime shoots off another of the flares once he has mounted the engine casing for his War Rig.

"Stop Fighting!" Leviathan barked. "We are War Boys, not Ferals! I won't have you killing each other for squabbles. Not one of you will enter Valhalla for dying this death!"

"We are punishing The Ace!" One Boy called. "For bearing the marks of the Immortan's Wrath!"

Leviathan's head flicked to the voice. He had not blacked his forehead, Ace noted, simply smeared black into the hollows of his eyes and up across the temple, so that it ended in uneven streaks somewhere around his ears.

"Yes." The Prime said. "He bears the Immortan's Wrath, but he remains a War Boy, just like you. A Crew who cannot work together will die an inglorious death. I will not have you shame the Redeemer."

There are disgruntled mutters, but eventually weapons are lowered, the wounded are picked up off the floor, and the dead are taken deep into the Citadel and not seen again.

The Fights end with a sudden finality and quickly pass away from memory.

The Ace has been without favor for Ninety Seven days when Leviathan calls Farrow to a Run on The Bullet Farm. The Cycle Rider hailed the V8, flashed a grin, and beat his hands against his bikes flanks. Ace slouched beside the vehicle; hands thrust deep into pockets, and listened to the rumbling thunder of War Boy Chant as the lift made its final trip groundside.

The words were dusty and without succor to his ears, had long since gone lifeless with use.

Yes. They are hauling. Hauling Mother's Milk, and Aqua Cola, and Greens.

Yes. They are War Boys. Yes, Immortan. No, Immortan. Hail, Immortan.

The water falls, the Wretched fight for the wasted drops. The Convoy moves out.

The Ace pulled his goggles down and his scarf up, and stood on the footpegs of the bike. The joints of his knees grind together as the bike leapt over sand and dune. He placed one hand on Farrow's warm shoulder, his thumb pressing into the bone of the boy's neck, the other wrapped around the shaft of a Thunderstick.

The sun was hot, the sand stung as it scraped skin, and Furiosa rode as Leviathan's Second. Ace saw her every time Farrow swung them around before the great cab. Saw her thump her metal hand against the roof, saw her lean toward the open window, not hesitant per say, but she never clinged to the frame with her feet propped on the door or foot well, preferring to stay in the safety of the gap between cab and tank. .

They entered Bullet Town before high sun, Leviathan making the trade. He ordered Crew to deposit liquid and food and in turn refill the tanker with gunpowder and bullet shells. The little rounds of death clattered into the hollow space like Before Time coin.

With the tanker filled, Leviathan set course for the Citadel, and they roll out, sending plumes of dust from their turning wheels.

The Ace's eyes scoured the road, cut over and across sand dunes as they rushed for home.

The thrumming bellow of the War Rig's horn broke the smooth hum of engine. He saw the feral Raiders burst from the sandy dunes, on bike, and car, and treaded War Machine.

The Ace threw his lances and fired rounds until the barrel of his gun was heated and red. All the while Farrow drove true, hunched low over the handles.

For all the Raiders killed, they cannot stop the bullet that shattered Leviathan's window.

"Witness," Cried the Crew, "Witness!"

The Rig weaved and wavered and charged forward, a dead foot weighing the pedal. Ace did not see Furiosa take the wheel, but he knows she has done so when the trailer stops its wild swinging. Just like he did not see the caltrops that blow Farrow's Cycle's wheel and send the two of them into the sand before the Rig.

The Ace was thrown clear of the heavy front tire, and managed to grab hold of the running bars to keep from getting pinned by the following set. His back and legs drag the sand, scouring away skin and fresh scar tissue, before he managed to pull himself up fully onto the runners. His shoulders burned and ached with the near dislocation of being yanked along. Ace's hands found the window sill, open, though edged with shattered glass and he pulled himself into the opening.

"Well, Furiosa," He said, then dodged her wild punch. "I trust you can take her in."

"Great Mother." She swore. "I thought I lost you."

He just grinned and pounded the cab roof. "I don't die easy. Raider's coming up on your left. Keep her steady, I'll take care of it."

He swung around the back and onto the tanker, repositioning Gunners and Lancers, and pulled his own trigger until it is just them on the road and the burning carcasses of those who tried to take them.

They reach the Citadel in due time and the Rig halts on the Lift with a screech that echoes through the curving rock walls. The Wretched keep away from the tanker, fearful of a crew that has so recently seen battle, who might be KamiKrazee enough to not want to stop.

The Lift rose with a jerk and the suffering of down below is left behind.

Joe met them in the bay, surrounded by his personal War Crew; Rictus Erectus and the two Full Life Imperators, Palaver and Innux.

Joe stood in the bay in his white cloth and obscuring armor and bellow pumping hunch. Ace cannot see his grin behind the horse tooth mask, but it is evident in the rolling skin of his brow.

"You've done well, My Furiosa." Joe wheezes. "Better than I could ever have expected for a failed wife."

"Be proud, Crew!" The Immortan announced, his hand flying up then out, pale finger jabbing in the woman's direction. "For today we have a new Imperator!"

There are shrieks and chants from the surrounding army, the sound of their honoring like rolling thunder.

Through it all Joe smiled.

The Ace knew Joe raised Furiosa because he thought it funny. Because it tickled him to have a Wife become a War Boy become an Imperator. Joe does it because The Ace is standing at Furiosa's side, and the Immortan thought it would burn him to be subordinate to one of His Boys, to be subordinate to a Wife.

Joe blacked her forehead with his own thumb saying, "Rise Furiosa, become Imperator and lead my Armies to Valhalla, Lead them to Victory for the Immortan."

With the ceremony complete, the Immortan turned to Ace but did not speak. Did nothing more than stare at him with cold blue eyes, and toothy breath mask, and wheeze wheeze wheeze of lung.

Furiosa is given Leviathan's old room, all his things, and the things of the Imperators that came before him. She stood in the closet sized space with The Ace between her and the closed door. Her hands shook as she reached for him, pulling him close, her mouth pressed hard under his collar bone. She screamed.

The vibration of it echoes over his skin, in his chest and bone. Her metal fingers dig into his arm; her organic nails pierce his flesh.

He let her yell into his skin, offered her comfort through proximity for he has no words to share.

When her fury abated, they go to the Garage and find Leviathan's crew huddling around the rig, only four of the original fourteen remaining. Furiosa takes one look at them, battle worn, chrome furious, and Valhalla chasing, and then looked to The Ace.

"You better go get the rest of your Crew."

"If that's what you want, Imperator." He threw the word out with a lopsided grin and a wink before he disappeared into the Citadel halls.

It took some looking, but eventually he found Twobit and Lock scavenging the kitchens, Yox and Kilo in the Sleeping Racks and pulled Fletch from the Repair Boys. He then simply waited for Morsov to show up on his own.

His Boys clambered over the Rig alongside Leviathan's old crew. They poke and prod at the metal, calling out damages as they find them. Furiosa marked them down on wax tablet, her letters shaky and wandering as she etched them into the surface.

"Mm, Ace?" One of Leviathan's boys called down.

"Whatcha want, Nos?"

"Coolant line's gone bust, nothing left to be salvaged."

The Ace nodded and Furiosa marked it down on her tablet, and she should be the one Nos hailed, should have taken control of the group from the start. She should have made a power play early, a show of ownership over them, over The Ace. But she just stood to the side, ledger in hand, and watched the Crew as they shuffled over the Rig.

His concern grew with each passing hour, for though Furiosa wore the Imperator's Black, the Boys looked to him first. They glanced, and pestered, and verified opinion and edged around Furiosa like she was a statue of a long forgotten god.

Furiosa stood at The Ace's side, though he should be standing at hers.

They returned to Leviathan's room when the sun had fully fallen and the damages to the Rig had been catalogued and put aside for the following day. The space was cool and silent, the air stale.

They lie on Leviathan's bed, Furiosa squeezed between Ace and the wall. Her arm was tight around his chest, and he could feel her breath moist and hot against his back when she sporadically thumped her forehead against his spine.

"You have to take control of the Crew." He said when she decided the action of grinding her forehead against his back would have a better effect of dislodging the day from her skull.

Her movement stills and can feel her lips when she says "Most of them were yours before they were mine. They won't forget that easily."

He grunted in response and pulled away slightly, the pressure of her against him twinging his scraped back.

"You have the Immortan's favor." The Ace said.

"I don't want it."

"Yes, you do. Favor is good."

"I don't care about Joe's favor!" She snarled, shoving at his back with hand and half arm. He was thrust from the narrow mattress and landed heavily on the floor. She glared down at him, the white of her eyes pale grey in the night.

The Ace surged to his feet, looming high and hard above her. "You don't get it, do you?!"

"Don't get what?" She too is on her feet, single hand shoving him back.

"You always fucking forget that you're a War Boy. You _are_ Joe's!"

She makes a noise like a bandit that got knacked. The Ace didn't care, needed to get his point across, so he simply got louder.

"You fight for Joe! You'll lead Boys to Valhalla for Joe! You will take his favor and you will _live_ for it. And when he thinks-"

Her fist strikes hard and quick against the socket of his eye and the sudden pain of it stops the words cold in his chest.

"Get out," She said and all is quiet in the room but for their ragged breath.

For a long minute The Ace didn't move. He simply stared her down, eyes making quick sweeps of her body, cataloguing, categorizing. She was tall, almost as tall as him, but he weighed more, had more muscle. More experience. He could take her down if necessary; show her what he had been trying to tell her all along.

Her fist flew at his face again and he took a quick back step to avoid it. He blocked the next blow with a flattened palm, felt surprise when she ducked down and lodged her shoulder in his gut, sent him stumbling back, gasping at air. His back hit the knob of the door and the force of it thrust the old wooden construct open. He tipped backwards into the hall, and she stood in the doorway and gasped snarls of breath.

"I won't be like you." She says. "I won't be his dog."

The door slammed in Ace's face.

The Ace slept alone that night, curled into his high ledge. Just him and his trinkets and his hate. Hate for how weak he has become, for how useless and minor he is now in Joe's grand plan. Hate for how he was so utterly _low_ when he used to be the very best, the Prime, the Alpha, the Ultimate War Boy. He lay amongst his things, and thought of Furiosa, and of how she betrayed him after all he did for her. He thought of her standing in her doorway, looking down at him, and his hands clench, nails biting into his palms.

He was the first one in the Rig bay the following morning. His mismatched teeth gnawed at jerked meat and he sipped that morning's Aquacola. His eyes surveyed the Rig, but he made no move to begin work. He just stood to the side of the War beast as the Crew gathered and turned to him for direction. The Ace ignored them, and the crew hovered around his side and fidgeted and asked what they should do.

"Nothing." He says and they heed his words.

Kilo settled by his feet, his broad back pressing against The Ace's knees, never one to pass up a chance to sleep. The other Boys followed suit, hunkering down around him, watched the other crews and War Boys drift into the garage for that morning's shift.

The Ace let them rest, and when Furiosa walked into the bay, he smiled at her like he has never done before. All gleaming teeth and promise of ripped throats.

The new Imperator stopped before them, her eyes narrow, fleshy fingers closing around the knife handle at her side. Her core tensed like she had been expecting this, this particular betrayal, this choosing of sides. She drew in a breath and started to draw the knife.

"You're not here to sit around." She barked, the blade a metallic gleam in her hand. "Get to work."

The boys eyed her, the blade, and finally The Ace. Slowly, they rose to their feet, and drifted to the Rig, the sound of their feet against the hollow tanker echoing through the space like a drum.

They left the two of them to their little drama, the next few moments secret to no one but the dead.

"Well, Furiosa," The Ace said, head tilting to the side, chin thrusting forward in a dare.

"Ace." Her rotting Green eyes are on him. "Get to work."

His smile for her is too ragged to be anything but hate. "Whatever you say. _Boss_."

He walked past her, and heard the knife slide back into its sheath. But her eyes continue to stab into his back like a spear.

The following day, rain fell from the sky and burned like acid. It ate away at the stone walls of the Citadel, the drops bursting against the stone in flares of nuclear green. Green Thumbs rushed to cover the roof top crop rows with plastic sheeting, yelping and cursing as the acid water boiled their skin. All patrol outings are cancelled and recalled, for fear of losing the vehicles to the corrosive elements. The storm continued for two long days, and despite the break from the radiating sun, Joe's army grew restless.

Furiosa used the gifted days to repair the War Rig and to enforce her new regime. She made herself prominent, stood tall with set shoulders and firm legs. Spoke calm and clear, made herself useful by helping Fletch with the engines and Nos and Toxic with repairing dents. She worked to prove to the Crew that she is capable, and competent, and worth following.

Her ploy would have been successful were it not for the obvious tension brewing between the Imperator and her Second.

Ace's Boys skitter and scuttle and walk quietly whenever the pair hit each other's orbit. Working with shoulders pulled tight to their ears and flinching eyes. The four left from Leviathan's wince and hum their discontent low in their throats but make no move to interfere, just mutter lowly to each other.

After the first day of rain, the War Rig's feuding in the worst kept secret in the Citadel, known from the newest of War Pups to the Immortan himself.

When the rain has passed and the sand has taken the consistency of motor grime, Furiosa drives the Rig into the wastes. The heavy wheels kick up slop that spatters the cab sides and the underside of the trailer. She runs the Crew and the Rig hard over the puddle laden roads, tries to throw them from the hand holds, experiments with the movement of the Rig and the trailer. Works to see how far she can swing and swerve before the crew flies off into the deep sand. She fights and plays, and feels at the power of the twin V8s and shapes her crew to work in sync around her.

Throughout it all, The Ace stood at her side, covered the blind spots and ran the Crew as she watched the road and engine readouts. Ace watched all the spaces she couldn't see, the tanker, the flanks, the crew. He moves from trailer to hood to running bars fearlessly. Took to hanging from her window to deliver reports, a snide dig at the single position she feared to take herself when she was Leviathan's second.

The former Wife does well at her new posting. The Ace isn't so blinded by hate to not notice. She takes the crew by storm once she put her mind to it.

She snatched up Ace's Boys, claiming them as her own and worked hard to turn her old crewmates from her time as Leviathan's Second to her side. She bought them off with a firm hand and reasonable requests. Treats Nos, Toxic, Spanner, and York with enough gentleness, cool though it may be, to have them lapping from her palm.

The boys glow and glimmer and die for her. Jump to Valhalla, and catch Buzzard lead, and despite occasional losses they go out on Runs and return successful. They lose York from Leviathan's crew, and take on others. They lose Yox to lung rot when the air turns heavy and humid, and Yox's replacement is taken by the Rock Riders. But mostly Furiosa's Crew stays. Stays alive, stays together, they burn bright under her, they gather favor of the Immortan, of the Wretched, and the low ranked War Boys. They become Known, and they ride high under the weight of The Ace's gaze.

Furiosa is favored. She is favored, and she is called back to the Vault. She pales though she has not worn white paint in over Seventy Five days. Her fingers clench and shake, and she stared at The Ace and then at the War Boy delivering the orders, as if she can already feel the Immortan's hands on her body.

For the first time in many moons turn, The Ace looks at her and is not filled with hate, but a sense of sour dread that rose thick in this throat.

"Imperator?" The War Boys said, eyes gooey with regard.

Furiosa unjammed, head turning in a quick snap. "Go. I'll be there."

The Boy twined his fingers and brought his arms over his head. Honor paid, he left.

The echo of the War Boys boots faded and Furiosa swore, fingers creating rows through her dash of hair. "Shit."

"He won't be calling you as a wife." Ace offered, arms crossing. "Probably."

"And you would know?" Furiosa snapped as she shoved by him.

He followed her through the winding halls, eyes drawn to the burn scar on her neck, displayed with close shorn hair and low shirt, worn openly, nakedly. Just like everyone else.

"He knows you're no good to him on your back. It's why he let you go the first time isn't it? Him calling you today won't be for that." The Ace said.

"I don't know why he didn't just kill you. You're no good to him either." She replied.

They had reached the door to Joe's Warren. Her eyes turned to him, off green and hard. "Go back to the Garage. You're not needed here."

Furiosa left him among the War Boys who guarded Joe's rooms. The Two Full Lifed Imperators who wore their skins open, tanned and pink. Their skulls grease marked and chins hair spotted.

"You wanting to go see The Immortan, Acey Boy?" Palaver asked him, grinned openly, his rotting teeth on display.

Innux laughed. "You don't have that privilege anymore, Ace. How's it feel to be demoted? To have that woman leading your crew? Leading you?"

"His gear shifts probably shrived off."

"Shame." Innux said.

"Such a shame." Palaver agreed. "Though I hear you like taking it now."

"Don't need a gear shift for that."

"No, Innux, I can't say you would."

They laughed the self-satisfied laugh of one secure in their position and the power that came with it.

The Ace just smiled at them, slow and dangerous. "You forget your place, boys. Don't you remember who trained you? Who raised you from the filth that you called a life?"

"Immortan Joe." Their lying tongues wagged.

"Is that so?" A blade slipped into The Ace's waiting hand, clasped loosely between fore and middle finger. The sliver of metal, thin, rusted, scavenged long ago from some broken box knife.

The Ace's hand snapped out, quick and unexpected, the blade cutting through skin, and lash and membrane. Until the Ace's fingers were deep in Palaver's eye socket. The skewered organ burst and leaked clear goop into his palm.

The man writhed underneath him, shrieking, scrambled with ragged fingers.

"Do you remember now?" Ace growled in Palavar's ear.

The Ace pulled away, fingers sliding wetly across skin. He rolled back onto his heels and stood, watched Palaver sob on the floor, saw Innux's frozen expression, the wide eyed fear of blood that The Ace, and the Immortan, and all the War Boys had never been able to train out of the man.

He wiped his hand against his pant leg and left.

The Ace waited for Furiosa in her room. Laid on her bed and watched the ceiling, eyes tracing the spider web cracks and nail calendar ticks. Small portholes had been chiseled into the rock and stuffed with the bottoms of glass bottles to let the sun in but keep most of the desert grit out. The light reflected through those windows in little displays of colored light, spots of green, and blue, and ochre.

He had begun to doze when Furiosa finally arrived. Her whole body shuddered to a stop when she saw him stretched out on her bed.

An eyelid pulled slowly open. "Well, what was it Joe wanted then?"

"He's going to Bullet Farm." Furiosa finally replied as she yanked Ace's legs off her bed and sat down in the open space. "For three days."

"So?"

"He wants me to guard the Vault."

"The Immortan's favors you." The Ace said snidely.

"I was to go with him." Her eyes crawled over his back, cataloguing each white mark. "But apparently whoever he planned on guarding the Vault had some sort of terrible accident. They say it might just kill him."

"How terrible."

"Yes. Yes, it is."

Her fingers brushed his shoulder then down his back. The light touch sent his skin twitching, and he flinched away.

Her hand came to rest on her leg, palm up fingers spider-like in the air.

"The War Rig is due for a run on Gas Town." She said.

"I'll see it done." The Ace said.

"Yes." She said as he walked for the door. "I trust you will."

Joe leaves for The Bullet Farm the following morning, the Gigahorse laden with his personal crew, but down one Imperator. Innux watched Ace warily from on high. He looked small without his brother, as lost as the day Ace found them amongst the Wretched.

Joe and his convoy departed with much fanfare. The Aqua cola poured and the War Boys gathered, and shrieked and hailed the V8 and their Redeemer. They revved their engines and saw their God off in a shuddering burst of noise and exaltation.

When the Immortan is no more than a spec in the distance, Ace gathered the crew and led them to the War Rig. It had been filled with Greens and Mothers Milk and Aqua Cola before the Immortan left and had been sitting in wait for the Run on Gastown.

Ace heaved himself atop the trailer to take a stand in his usual spot by the crown of the Rig. Voice and fingers jabbing, he directed the crew into place. Set them into their positions and watched them through the weapon and ammo checks, then does the same with the outriders and cycle boys. When it's done he waved them off, sent the smaller vehicles to the Lift and watched their descent. Then Ace limped over the hood of the Rig and swung through the open window into the driver's seat.

His hands flick through Furiosa's trip codes, long since memorized and catalogued, and the twin V8s roar to life under his hands. He can feel the raw power of them coursing from his feet and up his spine. The Rig lurched into motion.

"Let's do this!" He called then brought them from the Garage to Fury Road.

Ace drove fast and hard, the engines roaring and straining and so alive under his foot and hand and he felt free free free. They had been set upon by Buzzards but it hardly mattered, for the Rig was charging forward, and the Boys were fighting with gun and lance and fire. And it was Glorious, so glorious, this freedom, this control, this return to normality. Even a burst tire from a direct hit from an explosive round can do nothing to cut the edge.

A swerve of the wheel and the tanker jigs and its spiked sides smashed into the Buzzard's pursuit car, sent it swerving off and into a great rock. The crew cheered, their voices whooping loud over the roar of the engine, and Ace saw Spanner brush his palm over Kilo's head and Ace's mouth splits into a grin and Her tooth gleams with happiness.

Gastown loomed huge and dark on the Horizon, spat out thick black clouds that simmered in the sky and shrouded the sun. The scent of Guzzoline began five miles from the place as an aggravation to the nostrils but condensed until the air is mostly fume that burned down the throat.

The drawbridge had fallen for them and they crossed into the People Eater's territory. The Gastown Boys swarm around them and walked alongside the Rig like a color guard.

When Ace stopped the rig within the inner circle of the Gastown hold, the People Eater's tan-skinned men swarm the tanker. They connected tubing to the ports and drained away the milk and water. Others pulled packed Greens from the hatches and ferried them inside, a giant line of scurrying ants.

Through it all, Ace's Crew loomed high and distrustful, until the Rig is empty of Citadel goods and the work began to refill it. Guz flowed freely into the fuel pods and into the Rig, and did not stop until the ports overflowed and spilt black onto the ground.

When trade was finished, the Crew was drawn away to the Gastown Kitchens. The Ace walked tall alongside the Gastown Lieutenants until they too reach the Mess.

He and the Lieutenants sat on the ground along low legged tables, and a pair of dusty handed pups brought them food. The boys set out large flat dishes of rice and meat, bowls with slivers of flat bread; one brought a single glass of alcohol, filled high, and to be shared between the three high ranking men.

"Heard about that dust up in the Citadel." One Lieutenant said to Ace, even as his fingers moved from the communal bowl to his mouth.

"Is that still news three months past?" The Ace asked.

"Maybe. Maybe not." The man, Silica, replied. "Just wanted to hear it from an inside man."

"I don't care about that, "The second Lieutenant growled, "The real wordburger is that you've got a female Imperator."

The Ace licked rice off his fingers and chewed slowly. "That's true." He said eventually. "Imperator Furiosa would have made this run were it not for Joe taking to Bullet Farm."

"I don't see why that kept her." The Second groused.

"Joe's fairy story wives." Silica said as he smacked the other man's head. "Not like Joe trusts them alone."

"More like doesn't trust them around his War Boys." The man made a thrusting motion with his hips.

"Be a nice change of pace for those perfect breeders. I'm sure they'd love to take a young dick." Silica agreed. "You ever get to tune those prime engines, War Boy Prime?"

"You've not seen that Vault of Joe's," The Ace said. "There's no way to see those women if Joe don't want them seen."

The Gastown Officers sighed and shook their heads.

Ace and his crew overnighted at Gastown, hunkered in a large, sparsely furnished room, set aside for such use. Ace laid first claim, as was his right as Second, and his boys settled down around him, too woozy from breathing Guz fumes all day to do much else.

In the morning, after another light meal, Ace and his Crew replaced the tire damaged in the Buzzard raid and left for the Citadel.

A pup awaited Ace in the War Rig's bay. He was a little thing, hollow eyed and twitchy, but endlessly interested in the frenzy of the Garage.

"Imperator Furiosa wants to see you." The Boy said when Ace stepped down from the Rig's cab.

"Where at?" He moved after the pup, following him through the Garage.

"Immortan's Vault, said she had to stay there. Imperator Furiosa trusted me to get you for her. Sent for me from the Redeemer's rooms herself!"

"That is a high honor." The Ace agreed. "You've done good."

The boy smiled and ducked his head, and he tottered by Ace's side as they lead each other through the halls to Joe's Warren.

Ace knocked his fist against the Vault door, the action making a dull whumping sound against the thick metal.

"Furiosa!" He called and waited and called again.

But she never came.

Ace frowned and prowled outside, making two full circuits before the gate. Watching it with tilted head and twitching finger.

He knew the Vault codes. The ones from long ago, back when the Vault was filled not with women but with Before Time goods, picture canvas, and rock statue, and gleaming gold bricks.

Joe would have found a way to change it by now. Surely he would have…

Ace's fingers spun the dial, this way then that. Until there was a click of tumblers and the handle twisted under his palm and the heavy door swung open.

"Furiosa!" Ace called again, as he stepped into the raised passageway. His boots fell loudly against the concrete and he pulled the door closed behind him, for he knew it could be unlocked from both ends. He followed the light at the end of the tunnel.

He could hear the sounds of scrambling feet, and Furiosa's angry hissing.

"Ace!" She growled when he stepped into the main room. "How'd you get in here!?"

He rolled his eyes and waved a hand. "How do you think? I opened the door."

"Where the wives at?" He asked when his flicking eyes saw nothing but empty room.

"Elsewhere," was Furiosa's short answer, "How was the Run?"

"Fine. Traded Greens for Guz, got a Wordburger from the Gastown Lieutenants, we killed a few Buzzards."

Her jaw tipped up in a move that would have her looking down on most of the War Boys, but just brought her face closer to The Ace's. "The Crew?"

"Still Useful. None went chasing Vallhalla."

"Good, then I want-"

"You!" A woman stood in the far doorway. Though she was shrouded by deep shadow, it was easy to see she was small, small and frail.

"Stay in the other room, Miss Giddy!" Furiosa ordered, her shoulders rose as if she were about to fight.

The woman, Miss Giddy, stepped into the main room, and though her hair was white and her face aged, Ace knew her like he knew his own self.

"Hannah." Ace said, more a shocked passing of breath than a word.

The First Wife surged past Furiosa, her teeth gleaming in the filtered light, and water edged her eyes. The woman's arms struggled to close round his neck. She is so much smaller than Ace remembers.

He leans down for her, condensing himself, becoming small for her. He rests his face against her neck and his arms circle her thin waist. Her skin is no longer smooth but lined with deep furrows of skin and edged in blue ink. Every inch of her covered in letters, and words, and numbers.

"I thought you were dead." Ace said and Hannah let out a sound like a kicked pup. Startled and hurting.

"No more than you, it seems. I thought you died in the Purge." The woman called Giddy replied.

"Joe never talked about me?"

"Not in a long time. It's been…Not since the first group of Wives."

Ace tucked his nose against her hair. "I'm-"

"Miss Giddy?" A woman's voice called, and over Furiosa's shoulder he could see a pop of hair, so bright and golden it was as if the sun had colored it.

"Go back to your room, Angharad!" Furiosa demanded, stance widening in a threat as she drew herself up.

"But I don't-"The woman said. Her bare feet pattered forward.

Furiosa's metal hand closed around Ace's throat and he was yanked away, away from Hannah who was now called Giddy, and shoved back.

"It's time for you to leave Ace," Furiosa said as she pushed him back so that his knees hit the concrete ledge of the tunnel, "We'll talk later."

"But- "His hand still reaching for Hannah.

The Imperator shook her head, mouth pulled down, "You've got to leave."

Her hands shoved at him again, pressing insistently into his chest until he was left with two options, to force his way past her, or to yield to Furiosa's resolute stare and leave her and Hannah and the Vault behind.

With one last look he chose to relent.

Joe came back the next day, he and his war party. They roared into the gulch of the Citadel, and were raised high amidst cheers. The War Boys fervent and the Wretched with a pleading tone.

It is dark when Furiosa returns from the Vault, pale faced and glazed eye, but overall unharmed. She settled amidst her crew, and listened to their retelling of the Run and she smiled and nodded at the right moments, and praised her boys and their actions and made them feel chrome. And if she acted more at ease with her Second than then she had since earning her title, well the Crew knew better than to mention it.

The next morning, Furiosa led them out on patrol, left the War Rig behind to venture forth in Rev-tuned cars. Ace leaned on the Lancer perch, and they tore up sand, and rock, and took out Raiders, and pulled scrap from the desert's hungry maw. They lived on the freedom of the open road, running hard and hot in the pressing sun. Crew moved around them, with them, until they are one creature. They range until the gas tanks are dry and the engines are sucking fumes from the backup of the backup of their jerry cans.

They return to the Citadel begrudgingly. Sun scorched, with thirsty engines. Their paint long gone from sweat and wear, once pale skin tanned patchily. They rumble past the Wretched and are raised high.

Upon their return, Furiosa draws Vault duty more and more often, the effect Palavers death by Ace's hand coming to pass. She is taken from her Crew to spend long hours locked in with the Wives.

It is due to this that Furiosa fails to catch the Dayfever sickness that sweeps through the Citadel like a sandstorm.

The Dayfever started with a sudden chill that took over the body in rampant shakes, like a tire gone out of alignment. The fever hit next, pulling the body between extremes of hot and cold, until the skin didn't know whether to bump with cold or burn through thin membrane. Coughs follow, great barks that wretched the whole body into motion, and stole breathe away for endless moments. Sharp hacks that end in red stained lips and mucus coated tongues.

It takes the weakest among them first, the Half Lives who already graced the Organic's halls. Nearly wipes the slate clean of them within the first few days.

Within the week there were so many dead that not even the great fires of the Mechanic's pyre could eat away the flesh fast enough and then, with the bodies pilling up, even the healthiest among them caught the fever.

It took hold of War Pups who fell in piles along the halls and did not move but for their wheezing chests. It stuck down War Boys, and Wretched, Milking Mothers, and Crew.

It struck Crew.

Struck Crew so bad that when Lock fell into Morsov and the two went down on the floor of the Garage not one of them moved to help. The rest of the crew just sunk down on swollen joints and enveloped them on the oil stained ground.

"Slag it." Twobit wheezed, his thin lips gone lined and flaky.

The Ace's forehead came to rest heavily upon Spanner's shoulder, while Kilo's elbow pressed into the tumors on his neck. Air wheezed in and out of his lungs in shallow pants and he had no energy with which to respond.

They lose Toxic and Lock. Ace woke to find their bodies gone cold and stiff three days after the Crew gave into their collective sickness. They are hauled away by thin limbed loblolly-boys before Ace had managed to lead His Crew in Witness.

The memory of his failure pulled at the thin skin edging his eyes.

When Furiosa returned to them she was a storm. Her face was set, eyes deep and flashing in their socket, her lips little more than a slash of lightning.

"Up you get." She told them when her heavy boots are but inches from Twobit's side.

Her hands pulled at the Lancer's heavy arm until he managed to sit and sway against her leg.

"Not feeling too Chrome, Boss," Twobit drawled. His murky eyes blinked slow and gentle up at her.

"I imagine not." Furiosa agreed, a hand brushing quick and easy over his skull. "Help me with this and I'll shine you up, hm?"

Through heavy eyes, Ace watched her help Twobit fully to his feet. The Imperator pressed a steadying hand between the War Boy's shoulders before bending down to grab at the next boy. Her metal hand pulled up the short statured Nos, whom she wedged unceremoniously under Twobit's arm.

Furiosa raised each of her boys from the floor, shoving them against a partner, in a vain hope that four legs would bolster weakened muscles enough to stumble forward.

Ace finds himself paired with Spanner, and they bring up the rear of Furiosa's parade line.

"We're moving out." Furiosa said, as if this was just any other Run.

She led them through the Garage and into the maze like halls. They pass barracks and the kitchens, and stumbled up stair until they are in the Imperator's Hall. They enter Furiosa's kip.

Eight War Boys squeezed into the cupboard of a room by wedging themselves foot to shoulder on the floor. There is barely enough room to fit the ball of a foot between them, but Furiosa manages to navigate over and between them with dancer like grace.

The Imperator brought water, and Mother's Milk, and held her crew's heads while they sip; ran wet cloth over their foreheads until they are all but devoid of white and black.

Furiosa cared for them as they have not been cared for since their youngest of days. Few of the boys manage to remember their days among the Mothers, and praise Furiosa for her knowledge. But when Furiosa wipes at the sweat on Ace's face, all he can recall of Mothers is a long pink tongue and tawny fur.

They don't lose any more Crew to the Sickness once Furiosa took them under her care. Morsov and Kilo, the youngest among them, are the first to push off the fever's hold, and took to following the Imperator as though she were the moon itself.

The others fall into line slowly, like a motor breaking clear of sludge.

The day Ace forced himself functional he could feel the dryness of his joints and a swollen heat in his fingers and knew that he would never fully recover. The effect of the Dayfever is evident in the lines that cut deep into his face, lines that suck in white clay and black dust and hoard them hungrily until they look like the spider web print of a road map.

In a week he has become Half-life, though he is pureborn, old blooded, from Before Time stock. His life should be full. He saw himself in the mirror of the Prep Room and he is filled with hate. He hated that his body no longer matched what it should in his mind, that he has gone old, and bore the wear of his life. He hated that his body has gone to rot when he is only Ten Thousand Two Hundred and Twenty days and Seven Years.

It took nine more days to return the Crew to full strength; Ace had to pull from the slowly recovering mass of unclaimed War Boys to fill the void left by Lock and Toxic.

They take the Rig on a run to The Scrap Yard. The tanker is filled with Aquacola, and they leave after hearing Corpus's clear instructions. Trade water for engines and parts, buy nothing else.

It's not the hardest set of instructions ever given to an Imperator for a Scrap Run, but it is, in this case, a warning. Defy me, Joe hinted through them, and suffer the consequences.

It took three days crossing the sand to reach The Scrap Yard. The War Rig forced to pass through the no man's land that lies parallel to the Bullet Farmers holdings. It's near Harvester territory, but they never see hide nor hair of the long necked pursuit cars, nor the tiller fronted grills.

All the same it is almost a relief when they pull through the Scrap Yard's hodgepodge gates. The border fence is a mishmash of old world signage and concrete pylons. There are no guards visible. They are not needed. Everyone knows that the Scrap Master is omniscient within these walls, that he sees everything that occurs in his domain. Every being that enters knows that any misdemeanor will be met quietly, before you pass back out the gates, by either a knife to your back or a crossed wire under your hood that will have you burning behind the wheel you drove in with.

They are met by the Scrap Master himself once the Rig has rumbled to a halt. His skin is brown like the sand after an acid rain, and he wore his motor grease hair in elaborate braids, bits of metal and colorful plastic woven amidst the stands. His clothes are likewise made of scrap, until he is as multi colored as the walls that protect his hoard.

"Long time since I've seen your mazard. " The man's voice scratches. "I've heard telltales that you're not Joe's First anymore. They must have been tall."

"Mm" Ace responds from his spot atop the Rig, not bothering to tell him different. "The Wretched always like to talk. The Imperator has similar inclinations."

The Ace tilted his chin cab ward, where he could see Furiosa standing in wait, arms crossed, face set, and feet firm on the side runners.

"The Scrap Master, I presume?" Her voice floated over. "We've never had the pleasure."

The particolored man turned about, his lips pulling back into a metal spotted smile. "We've not. You must be the Imperator Furiosa. I have heard such things. Tell me, is it true the Immortan's cock is-"

"Why do you think I'd-", Furiosa's snarl was lost under Ace's.

"Enough of that, Warrick. The Boss is here on business, not to play rumor monger."

The Scrap Master's head turned about, his eyes glancing over The Ace considering. "You call her Boss?"

"When the title fits."

The man smiled again, all teeth and flashing metal. "Well, then Imperator Furiosa, it seems you're cleared to do business. Come, let's talk in my office, this heat can be so oppressive."

Furiosa stepped down from the Rig, and walked across the lot, muscles pulling tight in her back.

The Scrap Master kept Furiosa in talks long enough for the sun to roll slowly across the sky like a severed head. Ace watched the sun painted shadows lengthen, then condense from the cab of the rig. His heavy boots leaving smears of dust on the dashboard, his back contorted against the door.

He watched as the majority of the crew wandered off into the scrap heaps, searching for trinkets and useful bits for which they can trade.

It was a quiet day for the Yard, only one or two others hopeful there to make a trade. One was a single Road Warrior with rust coated ride. It was obvious what she planned on trading for, one of her front tires little more than shred.

Any others had the sense to stay out of sight of the War Rig, but Ace knew they were there, could hear the shift of metal under foot as they scurried about the Yard. Sooner or later one of his boys would find them, and the scurrying about would end in a tale of blood and loose teeth.

Cook fires were smoldering by the time Furiosa and the Scrap Master reappeared, their limbs loose from the colorful man's homebrew. Neither wore the pinched faced look of a dealing gone wrong and a tightness that has been coiling in Ace's gut loosened.

"Boss." He greeted as they neared.

Crew gave their own hellos, offered their Imperator a tin of boiled grains and semi hydrated veg.

She sat down heavily by Fletch, swaying slightly, mouth turned pleased at the corners. The Yard Master fell into a squat by Ace, at ease among an old business contact.

"Your girl did well." Warrick told Ace for all to hear. "You weren't wrong to put the black on that forehead."

"Rare I'm ever wrong about crew."

The Scrap Master snorted, "So you say."

His hands dipped into his deep pockets and he pulled out a scratched glass bottle the size of a palm. "Got a new brew, made it with some fermented fruit I got off a Lowland Pike."

"Watch yourself, Ace," Furiosa cut in, "Stuff goes down like acid."

"But it smells like apples." Warrick shook the bottle, set the cloudy liquid sloshing.

"Deal." Ace pulled a wrapped bundle of nuts from his pocket and dropped it in the man's waiting hand.

Nightly business done, the man stood and bowed once to Furiosa. "We'll finish our transaction in the morning, until then."

When the Yard Master had left ear shot all eyes turned to Furiosa.

"So what'd you get?" Fletch asked.

"Three engines, V-Eight and two Sixes, full mods on each. Plus four hundred pounds of assorted parts, our choice come morning."

"What's the cost?" Ace prompted over the crews ecstatic calls of praise and' by the V-eights'.

Furiosa's mouth twitched down slightly, and she brushed a hand over her nose. "Three fourths the tank. He tried to bleed us dry on those full mods."

"You did good Boss." Ace told her, and her returned smile made his fingers warm.

The next day was busy. Fletch and three other mechanically inclined crew members were sent to inspect and break apart the three engines offered up by the Scrap Master while the rest of the crew swept through the gathered piles of useful parts and pulled out the best of it. Each find was brought to and inspected by Furiosa before being placed into the large scale baskets.

The Scrap Master watched it all with half lidded eyes as he stood by the Ace and the Rev Heads.

"You'd tell me true if there were like to be changes at the Citadel, wouldn't you?"

"If I knew of it, yeah, but there ain't nothing. Same ol' slag as always." Ace replied.

The Scrap Master shook his head. "Seems that way to you maybe, but out here, all I see is a storm brewing."

Time passes like the deflection of a spring. Days feel condensed down to mere seconds or drag out in long hours, yet the constants remain the same. Furiosa has become a challenger to the spot of Imperator Prime, due to her popularity with the War Boys and the Immortan's regard. She never issues Innux a Challenge, and the hierarchy of the Citadel remains unchanged.

The years come and go.

The Ace is Ten Thousand Nine Hundred and Fifty days and 7 years old when Furiosa looks at him over the gutted engine of the War Rig and says,

"Why did you take me in after Joe sent me from the Wives?"

"You reminded me of someone." He answers and adjusts his hold on the Down Pipe for her to finish bolting it into place. "You had defiance in your eye when they brought you in. You had it when they kicked you out. That kind of fire don't deserve to go Wretched."

"Who?"

"Hm?"

Her wrist made short controlled movements as she cranked a ratchet. "Who was it I reminded you of?"

"Do you remember what I said when you asked if Hannah was my mother?"

Furiosa's mouth quirked down. "You told me your mother was a dingo."

"I didn't lie to you."

"You took me in because of a dingo?" A tone of disbelief laced itself through her words.

"You're the one who asked."

Furiosa stepped away from the engine block and pulled a rag from her pocket. The dark cloth rubbed at the fingers of her flesh hand.

"Come by my room tonight." She said when her hand was clean but for the grease set deep in the cracks of her palm.

Ace nodded and stepped away from her side. "If that's what you want."

Her room was more or less as he remembered it, small, sparse, though not lacking charm. A dusty plastic fish bowl held multi colored rocks, and bits of smooth edged glass. A secondary pair of boots sat near the edge of her bed, the soles worn down and peeling awaiting repair not scrap.

Furiosa awaited him; the candle flickering by her bedside chased away the shadows made by the last of the setting sun.

She was rubbing oil into the joints of her metal arm. The heavy contraption resting in the bowl of her crossed legs.

"That giving you trouble?" The Ace asked. "If you think it's going to be a problem on the Run tomorrow I'll-"

"No," Furiosa said, "It'll be fine. Come in, close the door."

He did as she asked and moved to sit by her side. Their thighs pressing close together, warmth shared through thick canvas pants.

"I want you to stay here tonight." Furiosa said cutting his eyes toward his face.

Her tooth glinted from under Ace's lip as he smiled at the memory long past drifting across his consciousness. "Are you asking me to sleep with you?"

An amused burst of air fled from her lips as she shoved him from the bed. "Maybe not if you're going to be like that."

She pulled at her boots, dropping them unceremoniously by her other set, then pulled the heavy metal insignia from her hips. She lay with her back to the wall, half arm tucked under her head. Ace fit into the space before her like he always had many years ago, a solid wall of comfort and security from whatever lurked under the ledge.

Her fingers brushed over the old brand on his neck, then down the long healed scars. She pressed her face against a patch of unmarked skin at his shoulder, and he felt her lips move. Felt them form one short sentence against his skin but there is only silence in the room.

The morning comes too fast.

Ace found himself hitching the last of the thick wires from the trailer to the War Rig, loud chant passing his lips. His boys crow responses, echoed by the hundred voices of their War Boy brothers and the Wretched below. Joe stood proudly above them, watching the cult that he made.

Ace's Boys were set, fully armed, fresh painted, glorious and splendid on the back of the Rig and in the patrol cars acting as bookends.

They were hauling to Gastown.

The Rig speeds across hard packed dirt, sending plumes of amber dust into the trailing cars' faces, already Ace can foresee the wheeze of Twobits breath this night, as his lungs struggle to dislodge the grit not captured by the cloth worn around his mouth.

Morsov rides lance on the point car, the new driver Suede doing well to keep the Rig's pace.

Ace can feel the shift of the Rig crew about him, can tell the dual engine's status through the thrum in his feet. He knows Furiosa's next action like he knows the flesh of his own hands, which is why, when Furiosa pulled the Rig off the road, into the uneven sand to drive parallel to the rising clouds of the People Eater's Hold, The Ace knew something was going to go, very, very wrong.

Today was supposed to be a Milk Run. In and out, haul foodstuff and exchange it for Guzzoline. The Ace had done the same many times, under many Imperators, done it himself a time or two, so for her to change course so unexpectedly…there must have been something more.

He swung down to Furiosa's door, wrapped his forearms over the windows ledge and leaned in for her.

"What's this?"

Her eyes flicked to him, tongue swiping over lip. But she said nothing, forced him to guess. This wass not normal. This was not how Furiosa ran things.

"We're not for Gastown?" He doesn't ask her why she didn't tell him the new orders, doesn't bother to push when it takes her too long to answer so simple a query.

"There's been a change of plans." Her voice draws forth eventually and a heavy weight formed in Ace's gut.

He paused in her window, leaning forward as if that would prompt her to tell him more. Furiosa didn't look to him, her lips did not part, and no words were forthcoming.

"Alright…I'll pass it down the line." Ace spared her one last glance before easing away from her window. He ordered crew to new postings, demanded they keep a sharper eye out.

It didn't take long for the Buzzards to find them, to pressure them with porcupine cars and buzzing saws.

Through the fighting Ace saw the burst of flare powder over the Citadel, yellow then orange.

It's then he knows exactly what it is she's done. Felt it settle cold in his blood, a sort of numbness that disconnected his brain from his body even as he climbed down to her window.

"Immortan's hailing Gas Town." He said it to give her an out, to hear the real plan, for her to tell him anything but what he already knew. "What are we? Distraction? Backup?"

Her silence is infuriating. Does he not deserve an answer? Has he not helped her get this far?

Above the Citadel bursts clouds of black and white. Bullet Farm. It's over. She's killed them, killed the whole crew. His Crew, His Boys, himself.

"What did you do!?" His frustration poured from him in violent decibel. "Why can't you stop!?"

She doesn't answer him, doesn't have to, with the appearance of the Wife. The blonde one, the one with the hair like the sun that forced his reunion with Hannah short all those years ago. Ace saw her pale hair and grew furious.

The shock forces his hand to grab the nearest part of Furiosa, his firm fingers crushing around her throat. Ace can hear her gasp and hack under the pressure of his thumb, feels her larynx convulse under his fingers.

Air growled through his teeth because he can't find itself in him to form the words. You're betraying us for _them?_

For the first time in his life Ace was aware of the lies he had lived by. He was aware of his own delusions, his own clouded beliefs. He was aware that in the grand scheme of things he was nothing to Furiosa, just as he was nothing to Joe. He was aware that he hated no one so much as he hated himself.

He saw her metal fist swing for his face, and he let it connect. Let his throat compress under heavy metal, let the blood well in his mouth. He fell from the rig, and all he knew was pain and sand.

It was the sandstorm that woke Ace. Rushing grains swept into the shattered hollows of his goggles and mingled with the sand under him, which had burst open like a split wound under impact. The sand gathered and buried. It tore at his skin, at the tears that flow wretched and thick down his cheek. The sand was made into a thick, engorged slurry out of the sweeping arcs of red that originate from his body.

Ace cried like he never had since Before Time, when he was simply five years and how many days old mattered nothing. He cried for betrayal, for pain, for not seeing Joe dead. He cries for Her, because he had failed Her now just had failed Her all those years ago. He had let Her down one final time.

He should have known when the treason was evident and Furiosa's metaphorical gun was in his face, that it would all come down to this.

The serpent, the king, the tiger, the stinging wasp, the small child, the dog owned by other people, and the fool: these seven ought not to be awakened from sleep.

Chanakya

* * *

First of I want to thank all of you for reading this fic, and for playing along with the world that I tried to build. I appreciate all of the comments, kudos, favs, etc., that I've received, and I can only hope that the end was worth it.

Secondly, I'd like to thank DieselCrane and nickiesaysstuff over on for their kind words of encouragement and willingness to play sounding board. It means a lot to have had that kind of interaction with my readers. Thank you most kindly.

And last but never least, thank you my dearest Mumbles, who spent way too much time combing through these chapters to ensure that my tense usage stayed spot on, and for not hanging up the phone when I called you late at night to hash out story arcs, and intentions cause simply going through it in my own head didn't always make it clearer. Your friendship has meant the world to me, dearest roommate, and I am loathe to think that classes have started up again and neither you, nor I are in them.

The Sequel to this Story can now be found with the rest of my works under the title **Another Man's Dog.**


End file.
